Forlorn Eternale
by Plato's Optic Runaway
Summary: Yeah, I really suck at summaries, but here goes: my spiffy story is sort of weird and, well, duh it's a Yugioh story, but i sorta created a Kaiba sister and made a whole happy little story about it. (Okey pokey, it's not too little)
1. Waking Up and intro

FORLORN ETERNALE  
  
  
  
Oh, yeah, sadly, I hate how I hafta say this...none of the Yu-Gi-Oh! characters belong to me, even though they SHOULD, (Maybe I could kill the makers and steal the idea...hee hee.. I could use the back of a hammer). They're all copywrited...blah de blah de blaaaahhhh...except Jasmyne (my sister person) is mine, ALL MIIIINNNNNE! Don't take that wrong, I'm not some kind of lesbian...actually, I'm obsessed with Seto and Malik and Ryou and Bakura [my friends and I and others I've heard call Ryou his good chippy side and Bakura his evil side...] and Yami and yes, even Joey, even though he's a total moron. And that Duke Devlon guy is pretty yummy too...mmm mmm good... I STILL think Joey should have won the Duelist Kingdom, I mean, Solomon [aka Yugi's grandpa] is gonna die soon anyway!! But Joey's sister is like 14!! She's too young to lose her eyes!!! Oh well...everyone's happy now anyway...)  
  
  
  
Intro- OK, my happy little fic might take some time to explain; if I don't  
t'won't (tis and won't, don't ask) make much sense, unless you're special and can read my mind from wherever the hell you are. (If you think you can, you need some help...I know I do...) Anyway, for my spiffy story I thought t'would (tis and would, get my thing???) be real spritzy (you know those lemons that you put on the tops of drinks?? That's a spritz. Don't ask [again]; if you really must know inquire at my good friend Englasu's reviewy place; she made it up...) if I made it so Kaiba had a sister. (I interrupt my sentences a lot, don't I?? There I go again...OK, if I get really weird while I'm writing this, blame m&m's. The chocolate is going straight to my brain!!!! MWAH HA AHA HA AHA HA!!!! I KNEW they were putting in mind control drugs to addict us and then take over the world with their chocolate zombies!!!! Oh, well, who cares...chocolate is yummy anyway, and I'll be a zombie as long as I get more chocolate...you know, it's actually kinda good with mustard...) Okey Pokey, (I made that up saying up; ain't it cool???) Back to the story...you're probably thinking, "OK, this person has serious ISSUES!!! (If you don't; I love you...) Well, I do, but read my story anyway so I'll feel special. It's my first ever fic and if you don't like it you'll be stifling my creative talent and I'll be forced to hunt you down and kill you!!!! If you really like it, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm a deprived and abused child who's really only supposed to be using the Internet for "school purposes. Oh, well, screw my parents...I love to write, and they can just DIE!!! (I sure get off topic a lot...) MUST TELL YOU ABOUT STORY NOW!!!! Seto is older that his little sister by...I'm too lazy to do math out of school now, but they're enough months apart so that they're in the same grade but it still works without them being twins. So, I dunno...they're like 10 months apart. (If that doesn't work, please inform me so I can make the due changes.) OK, I'm gonna shut up now and start; review when you're done!!!! Please please PLEASE with a cherry top and whipped cream and chocolate sauce!!!! (yummy nummy...chocolate sauce...EEEWWWW!!!! I'm getting really ecchie thoughts now, so yeah...) This tisn't (you should GET this by NOW!!!) the end; if you like it, maybe I'll write more. Yeah, and about the R rating, it's not bad now, but it gets a lot worse...hee hee...(And about the alligator mouths , I use those when I interrupt the story to blab). Venture forward, young Jedi, if I haven't sent you screaming to a nice padded room by now...  
  
  
  
  
  
CHAPTER I: WAKING UP  
  
  
  
BZZZZT! BZZZT! BZZZZT! Screeched her alarm clock so kindly placed beside her head.   
  
'Peachy. Another tragic day in the hell that is my life.'   
  
BZZZZZZZT!! BZZZZZT!! BZZZZZZZZT!! It further insisted sending out its message to all those doomed to hear it, "Get outa bed or endure me! MWAH AHA HA AHA HA!!!" Ain't alarm clocks great?   
  
'Damn it, why don't I just smother myself in my bed?!' She ducked deeper under the security of her covers.   
  
BZZZZZZT!!! BZZ- before it could continue, she chucked a conveniently placed shoe at the evil contraption. With a glassy SMASH!, the dagger sharp heel stabbed the face of the clock, a clean pierce through. don't ask me why it didn't totally shatter; I just thought it sounded cool... Grinning malevolently to herself, she moaned and crawled from her sanctuary. She routinely pulled off her pajamas and slipped on her revoltingly pink school uniform. She glanced back at her regular raven black clothes. She'd worn that color, the color of death, the color of mourning, ever since "it" had happened. Her parents-gone. Forever. They were never coming back. Not now, not ever. She displayed her hatred for the universe with the black garments, to show the world that it could not hurt her any more than it already had. She could recall that fateful day as if it weren't so many years ago, in a perfectly clear image, even though it nearly seemed to be a part of a completely separate existence.  
  
  
  
OK, note to y'all- like none of my flash backs that I make up actually like happened. Note the "I make up." Continuing...  
  
  
  
She and Seto were seated at their miniature white table; a chess board lay before them. 'Hmmm, how he used to love chess; he'd play it almost every day...' A small yellow pad of paper with pale blue lines drawn across it boasted to anyone and everyone who chanced to look at it that Seto had won every single game that he'd set out to play with her.  
  
"Ohhhh, I can' beat you..." she whined, crossing her arms in a pout.  
  
"Of course you can't. I mean, I've beaten you like 20 times in a row!!" he bragged, and then flashed her a nasty grin, which she ignored.  
  
She leaned back away from him in revulsion. "Sniff, sniff. Oh, yeah, well..." she contemplated a possible retort. "Well, Mommy likes me best!!" she sniveled. "So there! Pbbbbllllll!!!!!" she stuck her little pink tongue at him.  
  
"Nya-ah."  
  
"Ya-huh."  
  
"Nyah-ahhhhh."  
  
"Ya-huh!!!"  
  
"Oh yeah? Well why don't you just ask her then, little Miss Snotty Pants? I bet she likes ME best. After all, I AM the smarter one..."  
  
"My pants ain't snotty, poopy head!!! At least I don't pick my nose!!! You're the snot face!!!"  
  
Nervously, and twiddling his thumbs, "Whaddaya mean? I-I don't kn-now what you're t-t-talking about...I don't pick my nose, I-"  
  
"Yes ya do. I SAW you!! So there! You can't protect your secret anymore, Seto..." she said prissily.  
  
"W-when?" he stammered.  
  
"Yesterday. And you ATE it too!!"  
  
"No ya didn't!! No I didn't!! You're LYING!! 'Cause I didn't!! so you could possibly have-"  
  
She chanted, "Booger brain, booger brain, Seto is a boog-"  
  
"Stop it!!" he fussed.  
  
"Not 'til ya admit mommy likes me best."  
  
"Never!!!" he screamed. "Besides, I tol' you ta ask her!!"  
  
"I can't, you baloney-head. You think you're so smart, but you're really dumber than a dumb bell, which is really dumb since dumb bell even has the WORD dumb in its name. Mommy an' Daddy are out somewhere doin' grown uppy stuff at some fancy place. 'Member? That would be why they aren't here an' some other lady who's sup-supp-o-sed-lee our neighbor person named Lori is here. Even though I bet she's really a mummy queen who came back from the dead an' wants to take over the world with her specially Egypt magic...'cause she wears all that weirdo goldy jewelry an' reads all those weird books...but THAT'S why I can't ask Mommy if she likes me best!!" she re-informed him.  
  
"First of all, mummies don't come back from the dead, Jazzy, they STAY dead. That's why they're mummies. Besides, if she was really an Egypt person, why'd she hafta read 'bout her own stuff?? An' mummies aren't evil. The Ancient Egyptians prepared their dead by embalming them for the afterlife with all their favorite-"  
  
"Nobody CARES Seto!! And she'd might hafta read 'bout her stuff if-if...she hit her head on a rock and bashed it in real hard an' then she forgot everythin' that she knew an'...uhhh...then she couldn't find her magic remembery stuff so then she had ta read 'bout it an'..."  
  
"If you knew ANYTHIN' about anything important besides stupid kiddy stuff, you'd know that can't happen."  
  
"I saw it in a movie the other night, so there."  
  
"That was a movie," he said like a know-it-all.  
  
"Exactly! So it hasta be true!"  
  
He rolled his eyes. "You don't know anythin'."  
  
"Hey, I know 'portant stuff!! She persevered her argument, and gestured to her intelligence by jabbing her forehead with her pointing finger.  
  
He narrowed his eyelids. Acerbically, "Oh, yeah?? Like what, smarty?"  
  
"Ummmmm...."  
  
"I'm WAITINGGGGGG..."  
  
"True geniuses never reveal their secrets." She stuck her nose high into the air and turned away from him.  
  
"That's MAGICIANS, stupid," he snickered. "Oh, an' if you're so smart, then how come I just won AGAIN, hmm? You're checkmated!! That makes me have 21 wins, an' Jasmyne... still 0. Hee heee!" He gleefully added another checkmark to his column on the sheet, dull pencil scritching the paper. He then abruptly smacked her king down in the customary fashion.  
  
She peered down at it in distress. "Smarties don't need ta know how ta play dumb games, Seto. They gotta know...uhhh...smart stuff...like, ummm... math an' science an' ...other stuff..."  
  
He continued smiling at his victory. "For YOUR information, chess is a strategy game where ya gotta think, 'cept you wouldn't know that 'cause you NEVER think!!"  
  
She snapped, "I do SO!!!"  
  
"Whatever you say. An' just you wait, I bet mommy'll kick you outa the house when she tells us she really hates you..."  
  
She sneered at him viciously. "Well what if they don't come back, hmmm? I had a dream last night that they DIED!!! Then we'll never know!"  
  
He giggled. "You an' your nutsy dreams that ya think come true. How did they die, hmmm, sis?"  
  
She sulked, "They do SO come true!! 'Member the one a couple years ago 'bout baby Mokuba bein' born???"  
  
Reluctantly, "Lucky guess..."  
  
"It was three years 'fore he was born!!! An' they died in a car crash!!!"  
  
"They'll come back; stop tryin' ta delay what ya know'll come true...that mommy an' daddy'll make ya live in the garage when they say that they really like me best...an' you'll live offa rats an' seaweed..." He trotted over to the TV in its large wooden entertainment case. "C'mon, Jazzy, I'm sick o' beatin' you. Let's watch TV."  
  
"OK, fine...I'm sorta bored of losin' anyway..." she wandered over to the cheery floral couch and hopped up onto the seat next to her brother. After a brief quarrel over the remote, Seto triumphed and clicked the TV on. The screen wavered on and an image appeared, as customarily happens with a TV.  
  
"Waaaiiiitttt a minute...isn't seaweed from the ocean, Seto...?"  
  
He thought for a moment. "Some could've washed up from the ocean, stupid. We live kinda close to one..."  
  
He flipped rapidly through a few channels, cutting off the conversation that he had no idea how to finish with him on top. "Stupid, boring, babyish, dumb, stupid, news, mushy, yucky...eww...what are they doin'??" he scrunched up his nose as he listed descriptions of typically pointless daytime television.  
  
"Hey...wait a second, Seto...go back ta the news."  
  
"Why??" he gave her a puzzled look.  
  
"Just do it. I thought I saw..."  
  
Repentantly, he clicked back. "So WHY exactly are we watchin' this??!!?"  
  
"Look...uh oh..." her hand flew to her mouth in shock, and her eyes   
broadened in hurt uncertainty.  
  
He whispered, nearly unheard by his speechless little sister, "Isn't th-that...isn't that...Mo-mommy an' Daddy's c-c-car...?"  
  
Jasmyne was unable to answer. Her slate eyes were locked to the screen where her parents' vehicle was being engulfed in a fiery inferno, and some dull, apathetic reporter with short, professional, dusty blond hair in a burgundy business suit was droning on about some accident with another car.  
  
"It seems that both of the occupants of the first car were killed instantly in the crash, while the other individual appears unharmed, with just minor windshield damage...he is currently being treated for negligible cuts and bruises. The two persons in the second car are currently unidentified...although they are apparently a man and a woman, both around middle-aged. Their families will be notified as soon as soon as possible."  
  
  
  
Jasmyne's thoughts slowly drifted back to the real world. The real world, were everyone hated her, the real world, where everything was constant pain, a nagging reminder of her heartbreaking life. A life of suffering and angst; that was the destined life of a Kaiba. She lethargically gathered up the scattered shards of glass and plastic and dropped them into the trashcan. Then she headed down the stairwell towards the kitchen.  
  



	2. Outcast of the Mansion

CHAPTER II: OUTCAST OF THE MANSION  
  
  
  
Yeah, about how chap 1 looks so shitty: the whole changing chapters thingy takes too long and it took me while to figure this out, so I did some stuff wrong. Nevermind!!! Spiffiness!!! I got it too work all by myself without the help of my hopelessly useless friends!!! YAY!!!!  
  
  
  
In the kitchen, Seto and Mokuba were happily having their morning meals; well, Mokuba was eating, anyway. The 10-year old was shoveling spoonful after sugary spoonful into his open mouth, spoon overflowing with mounds of chocolatey puffs, while Seto coolly sipped his coffee as he skimmed the pages of the newspaper. He looked up as Jasmyne entered the room and made a quick gesture of greeting.   
  
"Hey," he mumbled.  
  
"...," she didn't respond to his attempt at being pleasant.  
  
"Seto, can you pass the sugar? I needta put more on my cereal. It's kinda yucky an' plain."  
  
Her distinguished brother chortled at the 10-year old's childish request, then gave him a perplexed but playful look. "Why do you need MORE, little brother? You have like ten pounds already...you'll drive your teacher nuts."  
  
He looked up at his idol. " 'Cause all the chocolate washed off in the milk an' now they don't taste chocolatey enough...pleeeeaaasssssseeee, Seto? My teacher won't mind...she says she wants us to be energetic in class," he tried desperately.  
  
He rolled his eyes teasingly. "Oh, all right, Mokuba..." he handed the jar of snow white powder to his younger sibling, and the child eagerly doused his bowl in the opaque crystals.  
  
Seto was always with Mokuba; they were absolutely inseparable, unless, of course, Seto was at his company, busily typing, making new complex programs that she could never manage to figure out, or hacking, which was about 3/4 of the time.   
'I never had anyone like that, at least not when I really needed it. No...after the passing of Mom and Dad, I was totally alone and isolated...Seto and I used to be like twins...me the adventurous, fearless, vigorous one, and him the sensible voice of reason when I was about to do something foolish or dangerous. He always was the smarter one...' she chuckled to herself. ' And I was always making fun of him and saying he was dumb...but then our parents had to leave us forever and hurl me senselessly into this hell that I live every day, with not a soul I can talk to in the world. My own brothers don't even know me anymore...Mokuba never did...but Seto just sort of pretends I'm not here...if he's not at his stupid evil company plotting ways to destroy people's lives with his damn electronics, he hanging around with his beloved little brother, doing "brotherly love" crap. He always seems to forget that I'm his little sister too.'   
  
She sighed drearily in light of what she'd been thinking about and picked up a granola bar, the yummy kind with chocolate chips.   
  
"No, I'll walk by myself, I don't need your damn car," she responded to her big brother's question before he even asked it.   
  
The pair paid little attention to her as they continued their lighthearted brotherly breakfasting. She drifted out the door, unseen and unheard, like a kind of homeless, neglected spirit, a stranger in her own home.  
  
  
  
The two brothers' eyes followed her vigilantly as she slammed the door behind her, and Mokuba temporarily stopped cramming his mouth, giving himself a chance to breathe.  
  
"Seto, what's wrong with Jazzy?" he asked, still chewing the crunchy remnants of his breakfast.  
  
"...I really don't know..." he folded the newspaper together neatly and placed it to the side of the table. He sighed deeply and stood up, a worried expression spread across his face, his profound blue eyes wrought with sorrow. "We better get going if you don't want to be late for school..."  
  
"But Seto...we can't just let her be so sad..." he protested.  
  
"I'll talk to her later..."  
  
"You never have time to do anything but your company, Seto." He finished his bowl of cereal and dropped the silver spoon back into the ceramic bowl, the eating utensil rattling against the sides of it for a few seconds. "You're there almost all day...you never talk to anybody but your employees and me, but only sometimes. Besides, she never wants to talk to you anyway. And what if she gets even worse? She's kinda been like this for a while..."  
  
"...I know... look, don't you worry about it, Mokuba. I'll take care of it."   
  
He rumpled the child's hectic mess of black hair, but Mokuba failed to grin.   
  
"C'mon, we better get going."   
  
And Seto led his younger brother out the door. He'd told him that he'd figure it out, but he really had no clue where to start. Jasmyne had been like this for as long as he could possibly recall, at least since their parents had departed this life on that fateful day that had destroyed their innocent lives forever. And then she'd just sort of showed up at his door, six years later, and he didn't know who she even was anymore. And now she hated him for some reason that he couldn't decipher, and there was not a thing he could do about it. She wouldn't even say hello to him in the morning, for Christ Sakes!! What the hell was he supposed to do about that? She probably thought he hated her or something, but he couldn't possibly image how she'd got that insane notion into her head. He loved her, even more than he used to, because they were just children then. Now they needed each other, but she refused his company and just shut herself up in her room every day. She was worse than he was, which was pretty bad. At least he occasionally ate and talked with people, even if he was yelling at them bitterly most of the time. But he was struggling to keep her satisfied and happy, and she was just inconsolable. He had no idea what to do. What could have possibly happened to her on the streets that had permanently disfigured her mind and heart for life? There were just so many questions he had but just couldn't bring himself to ask...   
  
  
  
As she walked down the sidewalk, she crushed the granola bar into bits of, well, granola and watched as the remnants dropped to the rough pavement. With malice she ground the bits further into the ground with her spike-heeled foot, and then continued walking onward to her destination.   
  
"They never cared about me. Never. They might have sort have used to...but Mokuba was just a little kid...and Seto...he barely remembers me...and the whole world hates me, just because of who I am...the forgotten Kaiba, and even if they don't know who I am...that my brother is an asshole and is the head of Kaiba Corporation, they shun me anyway because they're people. And people are hatred. People are a stabbing pain through your very heart." She sighed deeply again.   
  
"Seto and Mokuba always forget about me just because I escaped that damn orphanage where we were treated like slaves and I squirmed out of their fate. Seto was always a spoiled little snot genius kid. He never had to go through the street life, where there's no food or clothes. He's a pampered little brat. He always was, and he always will be. Even before Mom and Dad died, they still treated him best. And now he has his own fucking mansion and he's a multimillionaire. And he hates everyone and his only emotions are cold and cruel. How does that work!? He just can't ever be happy or content with what he has, can he? And he probably blames me for ruining his happy life with Mokuba, where he'd established something that had nothing to do with his old life. And then I came, forcing him to remember everything, and everything artificial he had created collapsed. Everything he has is fake, because the only thing he truly comprehends is computers, which is why he spends all his time with them. He doesn't understand what kinds of horrors befell me. I'm sure that my life was much worse than their happy life living with some rich snot in his huge mansion. I bet they had it REAL rough with him...they'll never understand me. No one will. Ever."   
  
  
  
The orphanage was pitch black, darker than a black cat's silken coat at midnight. She couldn't even see her own hand in front of her face. She tried to and accidentally struck herself in the face. Rubbing her cheek mournfully, she glanced nervously at the digital light up clock, neon green numbers illumining the room, creating a sort of faint aura surrounding the device. Don't you just love those things?? Well, I do. 2:12 AM.   
  
'Good. That gives me enough time to prob'ly be outa this country before that nasty ol' fat lady wakes up in 5 hours...I think...maybe I could even be in the next continent by then if I could just-'   
  
SMACK!!!! She caught herself by thrusting the palms of her hands in front of herself as she fell forward, muffling her scream so as not to awaken the others. She stubbed her knee on a nearby bed-end what are those called?? on her way down, scraping open a wound.   
  
After examining it thoroughly for any major damage, she craned her neck around and asked herself quietly in a nasty, harsh whisper, "Why is there a FLASHLIGHT on the floor here?!"   
  
She then picked up the culprit of her almost deadly-to-her-cause tumble and turned to toss it absentmindedly behind her, but then realized it could used better to her advantage. Creeping silently towards the windowsill with her flashlight set on low, creating a dim beam of yellow light in front of her, she glanced back at her slumbering brothers for one final time; hot tears began to well up in her huge, storm-cloud grey eyes.   
  
"Goodbye..." she whispered, choking back her sobs of grief.   
  
Turning back to the window, she placed her minute hands on the cheap white plastic that embodied the window and yanked it open, the hunk of glass nearly too heavy for her to lift with her muscle-lacking, girlish arms. An icy October wind stung her face and nipped at her nose, making her cough. She froze, taking in the fact that she had just committed a grave error. Ten entire minutes inched by in dead silence, Jasmyne uttering not a single word, not twitching a limb. Fifty years seemed to have passed, but when she finally resolved that the coast was clear, she tiptoed back to the opening to the outside world, freedom. Disregarding the frigid gusts wafting inside, she peered down at the pavement of the parking lot below.   
  
'That'd really hurt if I landed on it...maybe I should-'   
  
She suddenly spotted the means of her getaway. She snatched up a pillowcase from under some older kid's head, quickly replacing the bare pillow beneath his head again before his face even lowered back to the bed. She then held it high above her head, leapt from the ledge of the window overhanging from the edifice, the pillow acting as a sort of parachute, wind catching hurriedly in the cloth. She glided safely to the ground. Her feet secure on the earth once more, she sprinted from the trashy yard and down the road, not looking behind her once, sour salty tears flying off her cheeks as she sped away.  
  
  
  
Ohhhhhh...I'm all sad and depressed now...that part always makes me so sad...the poor chibby little kids...don't worry, it gets even sadder...if you like sad sappy stuff like me...  
  



	3. Staring

CHAPTER III: STARING  
  
  
  
OK, just to tell you nice readers who are actually nice enough to actually bother to read my spiffy fic, MOST of my kinda story goes along with the show's plot because...I wanted to say what it was like for Jasmyne's point of view. Maybe if I write a sequel then I'll make up my own plot...actually I'm almost definitely going to if I EVER finish this story in this lifetime...if I screw up some of the lines later on that the peeps say, I'm sorry I'm not some kind of sped who goes and watches all the episodes like 10 billion trillion times to memorize the quotes...more like five times...it doesn't matter anyway; most of it is sort of my own idea of what happens 'cause she doesn't spend most of her time with the gang. You don't hafta worry now anyway; I'm not getting into that for a while. Got a problem with it??!! Good!! Deal with it; don't tell me!!!!! I don't care!!!!!  
  
  
  
The whole happy Yu-Gi-Oh! gang was sitting in their little spot of the classroom, way in the back, talking about typical stuff that weirdo teenage kids like them talk about, like, ummm...duel monsters and ummm...other stuff that they converse about daily in their normal happy lives. If you can actually think of anything that they ever talk about BESIDES duel monsters, tell me, OK??? & I thought I didn't have a life... Without a sound at all, Jasmyne scuffled into the room, her head down as usual, and nobody whatsoever noticed her (as usual...). She tossed her stuff (backpack, books, etc.) onto the hollow wooden desk (that schools spend a miniscule fraction on because the teachers waste all the school funding on teachery crap) with a loud THUD sounding from its smooth surface. Joey, actually being silent for once in the conversation because he had nothing to say regarding the disturbing topic (something about Yugi getting so high on caffeine and 2nd hand smoke that he devoured a jar of his oh-so-useful hair gel?? He said it sort of tasted like orange jellybeans...Has Joey ever been quiet, by the way?) And his eyes lazily shifted over in her direction. His heart sunk into a bottomless chasm, careening downwards eternally, and he felt a nauseating feeling in the pit of his stomach.   
  
'God, she is SO gorgeous...why does she always sit by 'erself like that, anyway? I wouldn't mind sittin' with 'er...she's always so upset an' sad like every day...I wonder why? What does she got ta be sad 'bout anyway? Ya know, maybe I should go talk to her...'cept the guys would think that I'd gone off the deep end...well, deeper, anyway...either that, or they'd make fun o' me forever an' I'd never hear the end o' it...that pisses me off so bad about them; they can't ever, like, I dunno...support me an' the rest of us an' be nice all the time...'cept maybe Yug...but he's different...damn it...why does life have to be so damn hard...?'  
  
He sighed dreamily and leaned his head on the surface of his hand. He shuddered with delight as she crossed her legs, the sleek skin of her long limbs sliding lusciously against itself. Her black pumps strained the arch of her legs and ankles in a way that he couldn't help but be stirred lewdly by. She paid no attention to him, and continued munching on the end of her pen and not even trying to pretend to be concentrating on the teacher. He was slightly embarrassed that this aroused him. Her shadowy eyes were cast downward at the floor, carefully studying the simple tiles, her prismatic dark locks wilting into her face like a dying rose in the scorching summer sunshine, rays beating down on it relentlessly until it flopped to the arid, dusty ground, overwhelmed by the heat. She flicked a curl of it out of her mouth. He continued gazing hopelessly at her.   
  
'Man, she has such great legs...they're so perfect an' smooth...an' her eyes...hmmmmm...they're so mysterious...and deep...wow...I don't know how she gets away with never talkin' to nobody...if I could just say one word to her, I'd...oh, I dunno, but whoa...God, I want 'er...what da hell is my problem...But oh, I so wish I could hold her and touch her and...'   
  
He paused for a moment, putting his current thoughts on hold. Jasmyne's thin shirt had slipped from her shoulder a bit, exposing her red lace bra strap for all the eye to see. Fortunately, only Joey was looking... A cold shiver flew up Joey's spine, as if a blustering wintry wind had just brushed by, or a phantom had strayed across his path from the other side, floating past in a deadened manner, bringing its paranormal breezes with it to warn all those it touches.  
  
'Does she hafta do that...hmmmm...she's killin' me as it is...if I don't die from somethin' else, she's gonna murder me like this...actually, I wouldn't mind if she killed me...'   
  
She hadn't noticed the revelation of her bra, and continued with her work. "Ohhhh...yeahhhhhhh..." he murmured to himself.  
  
  
  
Why did that tall blonde kid always stare at her so much? It was pretty obvious he had a thing for her and he wasn't trying very much to disguise it...that was evident...it wasn't even necessary to read his thoughts to figure THAT out. If anyone paid the tiniest bit of attention to him, they'd piece the puzzle together...he was probably out to kill her or something...either that, or he was planning to stalk her, rape her, and then kill her...great. Now she was going to end up in the middle of a filthy alley or something with her body half decapitated. She dealt him a baffled look, as if to say, "What the hell is your problem?? Leave me alone, you perv!" And then turned back to the completely meaningless math assignment she'd been so caringly given by her lovely bastard of a teacher.  
  
It was probably a good thing she didn't read his mind; I'm betting that she wouldn't have been very pleased with what she saw. He wasn't thinking the cleanest of thoughts...tee hee...  
  
She glanced down at her gently curving shoulder and yanked up her shirt quickly. When she cast the blonde one more suspicious look, he swiftly turned his head away from her.   
  
'So THAT'S what he was so intent at looking at...typical...even I can tell that he likes me and I'll not really good at that kind of thing...he's...kind of odd...sort of a dork. He'd better not try anything...'  
  
  
  
Joey was continuing indulging in his teenage guy fantasies with non-school appropriate content except for maybe gym class...EWWWWWW! as he watched her hypnotically twirl one of her wavy dark brown ringlets around her index finger, entranced in its movement in her despair. when he suddenly felt a sharp slap on his face. "What the-" he spun around.  
  
"Well, Joey, it's nice to see you're back in this universe on earth again."  
  
Still slightly in shock, he replied, "Whaddaya mean, Tristan?"  
  
Tea giggled, "Well, he's only been trying to get your attention for about the last 10 minutes. Do you even have any idea what we've been takin' about? You're really spaced out, Joey..."  
  
"I was...uhhh...I was listenin'...I heard every word..." he brainlessly fibbed.  
  
"Really? The what were we talking about, hmmmm?"  
  
"Uhhhhhhhh...rhinos who live in trees...?" explain later!! His retarded answer sent the entire group into a wild laughing fit.   
  
Tristan, after about 5 whole minutes of this making fun of Joey feeding frenzy, still wiping tears of hysteria from his hazel eyes, finally spoke up, still with a hint of humor in his tone, "You really can be pretty stupid sometimes, you know that, buddy? Actually, more like all the time..."   
  
"Yeah...what were you so interested in anyway, Joey? It's like, I dunno...you were...mesmerized." His midget sized friend widened his innocent purple eyes to emphasize the last word.  
  
Irritated by Yugi's choice of words, he said warily, "Ohh...nuttin'...I was just...lookin' out the window at...there was this...ummm...rabid squirrel, see, an' it was white an'-"  
  
"You ARE aware that the windows are on the OTHER side of the room?" Tea interrogated his backup story further, as if just to purposefully toy with him.  
  
"Ummm...well...see..I ummm...uhhhhh..." he looked up at the ceiling and scratched his head.  
  
Tristan grinned. "I bet I know what, or who he was lookin' at. He was- OOOOWWWWWW!!!!!" Joey smashed Tristan's shin with his new steel tipped boots he'd ironically yet conveniently worn that day. I SO need a pair of those!! Kick people to bloody pulps...he hee heee... :( for them, :) for me...  
  
"Let's keep our limbs to ourselves, Mr. Wheeler," scolded their teacher.  
  
"But he-"  
  
"I don't CARE what Mr. Taylor did. this teacher has issues with calling them by their last names. YOU don't kick people and- are those steel tipped boots? What are you doing wearing those and assaulting others with them?"  
  
"Uuummmmm..."  
  
"Well, ARE they???" he queried.   
  
"Ummmm...no...not really...kinda...sorta...a little bit...maybe...ummmmm....yeah..."  
  
"You could SERIOUSLY injure someone with those. What are, stupid?! I've told you before that violence isn't allowed in this school! Unless its justifiable or in defense, which that definitely-  
  
"Yeah it was-"  
  
"No it wasn't! I wasn't lying or anything-"  
  
"Shaddup, Tristan," he sneered.  
  
"Don't interrupt me! If you want to beat people up, don't do it on my time! And don't you dare kick anyone again with those or I'll personally have to have you expelled. Comprende?!"  
  
"Yeah..."  
  
"Good. Now get back to work. This is high school, not kindergarten. There are rules you have to follow. And the rest of you!! Stop dawdling by gawking at him or I'll fail you all!"  
  
"Yeah, fine..." Joey consented, giving up what little dignity he had to begin with.  
  
The rest of the classroom quickly continued diligently scribbling away at their papers, while Joey grumbled about getting yelled at under his breath. "Grrr...rumble grumble grumble rgghhh..." make it sound like how Yzma sounds after she gets fired...Emperor's New Groove! He slouched down in his seat as low as he possibly could to avoid drawing attention to himself, while Tristan laughed quietly to himself for getting "Mr. Wheeler" into trouble. "Damn that Tristan...don't worry, buddy, I'll get ya good..." and he kicked Tristan in the shin again when he thought the teacher wasn't looking, and luckily for him, the teacher was busy talking to some kid who couldn't do long division.  
  
  
  
OK, in case you're confused, you DEFINITIELY should be. If you aren't well, wowie zowie, you're smart. I'll get to the whole mind ready bit in the context of the story. I HATE explaining stuff like this!! Oh, looky there, she's doing again!! [hits herself over the head with a dictionary.] Oh, yes, and I promised to explain the tree rhinos. They're not just some random thing I made up now; they're actually a very old thingy I made up years and years and years ago. [I was disturbed child...] Very few people know about the tree rhinos, and even less truly understand their nature. [only 2- me and my sister, and maybe my friend, Mystic Kiwi...] Now I decided to broadcast them to the world. Well, they're these magical rhinos that reside in nests in the tippy tops of trees. You can find them anywhere, from the snowy mountains to tropical islands to deserts. [if there are trees...] They hate cities. If you climb a tree and meet one, they'll be extremely hospitable and even let you stay for tea or a snack, unless they're one of the evil rhinos, but they rarely happen. [they're usually evil twins...] They always talk about their huge rhino families who also live in trees, just like them, but tree rhinos are ALWAYS solitary creatures, no exceptions. If you piss them off, they'll use their "magical powers" on you and try to kill you. Well, someday I'm gonna write a whole history of them, so you can look forward to that. All righty then, you probably think I'm some kind of insane nutcase who belongs with some friends in spiffy white coats. I'm gonna shut up now and continue, please don't think that being insane makes me any worse of writer; actually it helps.   
  



	4. Hatred

CHAPTER IV: HATRED  
  
  
  
Okey, Pokey, these next couple chapters should clear some stuff up for you. If you're REALLY slow, then they probably might not...ummm....yeah...and I've vowed to shut up more often in the story too, so :( :( :( :( :( no more randomism...  
  
  
  
Jasmyne silently grasped the Grecian-style doorknob to her brother's expansive mansion, and quietly opened the large door. It squeaked on its rusty hinges as the door swung open, and she sauntered inside, slamming the door behind her, making the room around her rumble somewhat. Being now aware that someone was finally home and there was somebody other than grouchy servants to talk to, a merry Mokuba bounced up to her. His bright grey eyes, a few shades darker than hers but still unquestionably the same eyes, blinked up at her happily. She ruffled his unruly mass of black hair and he grinned. She managed a small but meek smile, for him.  
  
"Hey, Mokuba."  
  
He piped up quickly, "Hiya, Jazzy. Seto's kinda doin' work right now at his company, so he's not here. He said somethin' about a big project that he was busy on...some sorta virtual reality game..."  
  
"That's nice, Mokuba..." she murmured melancholically.  
  
"He even let me look at some of the stuff and it's really cool!! You could come later with me when I go back to his lab even though I'm not s'posed to but Seto doesn't mind...not all the time, anyway... he sorta ignores me a little bit an' says 'don't touch anything unless I say you can, little brother,'" Mokuba imitated his older brother CEO's deep masculine voice down to the smallest detail. "You wanna do somethin', Jazzy? Seto said not to come back for a while, so I hafta leave him alone..."  
  
"Sorry...I gotta go upstairs and do my homework. See you, squirt."  
  
"You wanna do somethin' later?" he asked hopefully.  
  
She sighed. "Sure, maybe later."  
  
Mokuba shuffled away with his endearing little sneakers dragging across the hardwood floor as he watched his older sister trudge up the elegant marble staircase that led to the upper level of the house and locked herself up in her room, like she always did. He was beginning to detect a pattern in his siblings' behavior: they were constantly shutting themselves away from the world, away from him. They rarely had any time to do anything with their little brother anymore. This was not out of the ordinary, but he was starting to wonder why they continuously acted this way. "They weren't always like this...at least I don't think so...Seto was sorta nicer before Jazzy came ta live with us...but Jazzy was always like this, for as long as I can remember...at least after Mom an' Dad died..." he cringed at the few scattered, stabbing memories. "Seto isn't as bad...I guess...at least he talks to me and sorta eats stuff...he kinda drinks a lot of coffee, though...but Jazzy doesn't even always come down for dinner...I should probably try to figure out what's wrong...but she won't talk to me anyway...I better do my homework first...Seto'll get mad if I don't..." as he passed his sister's room and entered his own, he took one last worried look at the blank, staring face of her closed door, and then slowly shut his own.  
  
  
  
Hey, does anyone know how to work a coffee machine?? I'm kinda havin' a craving for coffee and my parents aren't here and I really want some coffee but I'm not supposed to have any...  
  
  
  
Jasmyne sighed heavily as she opened her leather backpack and proceeded to do her daily laborious homework task.   
  
'Why am I doing this pointless crap, anyway? Nothing matters. Especially not this shit.'   
  
She carelessly threw the books onto the floor and snapped her pen in half by the middle, grasping either end and increasing the tension until the tube of plastic splintered into debris and tinkered onto her dark wooden desk.   
  
'We're all going to die anyway. Who cares about anything? Why do I bother to even go on living? I should just kill myself now...that'd show the world...'   
  
She then pulled open one of her cherry finish desk drawers and drew out a long, silver dagger. The sheer, polished surface of the blade shimmered in the artificial electric light emanating from her lamp. She ran her fingertip down the murderous edge, seeing the blood seep out of the cut and down her fingers, dripping down the pale skin of her hand, the vivid scarlet liquid contrasting greatly with her flesh.   
  
'I should just stab myself now, and spare myself from the torture of living. Nobody loves me or would care the least bit if I disappeared forever...except for maybe Mokuba...what'll happen to him if I...' She faltered for a moment. "He has Seto," she declared firmly to herself. 'He probably won't even notice when I'm gone and I never return...they'll probably bury me in the backyard with a plastic shovel! Then they'll bury me in one of Seto's briefcases from his never diminishing supply of them so he doesn't have to pay for a coffin!! He probably has a whole room devoted to them. That's just like Seto...he can't spend any decent amount of his precious profits on anyone he pretends to care about...but I know the truth...he's despised me ever since I came and disrupted his blissful life at this mansion...I was an agonizing reminder of his distant past...one that he had tried so hard to suppress and forget...and I just had to wander in from the streets and beg to live with my only family...the only people I thought still cared about me...he doesn't even know what I went through trying to survive on those streets...I can't believe I was tricked into being used by that damn bastard Stanley to help him with his filthy business and do his dirty work...I was naive and impressionable, and he used me for all his cons and heists and everything...and then he left me...all by myself...'  
  
  
  
"Stanley, are you sure we're not breakin' the law_"  
  
"What'cha mean?" the tall, dark haired Italian man cast her a sadistic look. He spun around in the darkened alleyway and came closer to his youthful companion. He towered over the child in the shadows. A few rodents scampered around, and a stray striped cat pillaged a nearby trashcan, filled to the rim with grimy refuse.  
  
"I mean, I think my Mommy told me that stealing and selling drugs is bad and that you're not supposed to-"  
  
He seized her by her frayed collar and sneered, spit droplets spattering on her face, "Listen, kid, forget what ya damn mommy told ya. Ya ain't with her no more. You're with Stanley now an' I musta tol' ya a million times that if you wanna get fed an' have clothes than ya gotta do what I say! Otherwise, I'm gonna hafta get rid o' ya! Got it, sweet cheeks?!"  
  
She lowered her head, dark brunette locks drooping into her misting eyes. "Yes..."   
  
"That's a good girl. Now listen up good. We ain't stealin', we're... borrowin' some money from the nice people at the bank. Here's the plan: once we get there, you blow up the back wall with your little fireball power and then we go in. I say that they gotta hand over all the money in their vaults and if they don't cooperate, you blast up anyone ta smithereens that don't listen."  
  
Timidly, "But...Stanley..."  
  
"Shut up, ya little brat!"  
  
She sobbed, "But somebody could get hurt..." her round eyes brimmed with tears.   
  
"Exactly! Now-"  
  
"But I don't wanna kill anybody, Stanley..." she wept.  
  
"You don't gotta kill nobody, just hinder 'em so I can get the money. Have I ever made you kill anybody before? No."  
  
"Yes you have...'member that guy last week who-"  
  
"He was different. He cheated me outa ten thousand bucks and said I owed 'im. So...I had ta get rid of 'im. An' if that meant havin' you do it, too bad."  
  
"You made me light him on fire..."  
  
"Well, you're too little ta get a gun. Legally, anyway...now listen. You're special, kid. You might be some kinda freak to some people, but I don't mind. You're a great help ta me, ya know that? I mean, I could never do the kinda stuff we've done by myself or with some other stupid goon. You're smart, kid. Whiny, sometimes, but hey? Who am I ta choose who ya are? An' on top o' that ya have that firey thing an' you read people's minds."  
  
"Then how come you yell at me so much if you care about me?"  
  
" 'Cause you piss me off with all this 'goin' righteous' crap! You used ta just do whatever the hell I told ya without arguin'! Now you do this whole 'but it's wrong, Stanley,' routine. If ya wanna be good, fine!! We'll just starve!"  
  
"But why don't you just work and get some money?"  
  
"Look, sweetie, money don't grow on trees. You're smart enough ta know that. Ya gotta get it somehow, an' I really need a lot o' money if I'm gonna start my crack business up again that those damn cops shut down...don't worry, after that, we won't need ta steal no more; we can just sell coke ta stupid kids who don't know no better an' make it cost way more than it should. Then you won't have to kill anymore people...not often, anwway. Now c'mon. If we can keep this goin' we'll go buy a nice house in the country when we got enough money an' we'll have lotsa flowers an' you can spend the rest o' your life havin' fun like a real little kid." He placed his callused hand lovingly on her shoulder and kneeled down to look at her levelly in the eyes.  
  
She looked up at him with a renewed respect for the man, staring sadly into his cold black eyes. "R-really, Stanley?"  
  
"Sure, cutie. I just...don't have enough money right now, but with you helpin' me, then we can sure as hell get plenty enough for us to live the rest of our lives filthy fuckin' rich. Now, c'mon."  
  
She tugged lightly on his sleeve. "You promise we won't have to hurt anyone else?"  
  
He chuckled. "Yeah, I already tol' ya that." And she pattered after him, trying vainly to keep up with his long strides as they traveled down the dampened street together. She stomped playfully in a mucky puddle of water spread across the avenue, giggling as the tiny droplets splashed all over her.   
  
"Hey, quit playin' around, kid! Ya can play later! Right now we got work ta do. Get goin'."  
  
"'Kay, Stanley." And she trotted back over to his side, readily assured now that she was insured with a better life to come in the near future.  
  
  
  
Jasmyne and Stanley now stood in his grubby apartment downtown. The faded, off-white paint whose color by now somewhat resembled a mixture of mud and algae water was peeling off the walls, and bits of it curled on the floor as it dropped off. The soiled rug that covered the miniscule, so-called family room had bits of undistinguishable odds and ends clinging to it, including old cigarette ashes and hair. Jasmyne had never thought of it to be very "familyish." A slightly cracked, ancient television with bent antennae sat on a three-legged makeshift table made of plywood in front of the musty, sagging beige couch. The kitchen was but a corner of the apartment, with a stout refrigerator and the only contents being three 6-packs of beer, a half-empty bottle of mustard, and a few three week old slices of pizza with hints of green fungus growing on them. A square metal table was set up about 2 yards in front of the fridge, with two non-matching wooden stools. It looked like it had been constructed at least three decades ago, and terribly abused as well. The bedroom, a small space adjacent to the main room, had but one bed with stained sheets and a smelly, slightly moldy, closet, where a few of Stanley's clothes were stored. A cot in the living room designated the spot where Jasmyne slept on the floor, with a smudged pillow for her to rest her head on. The entire residence reeked strongly of cigarette smoke, vomit, and human urine. The bare, curtainless windows smeared with fingerprints and smog looked out onto the lighted city, with all of the buildings incandescent and glittering brilliantly against the ebony sky. Jasmyne sat curled up by the window, forehead pressed against the glass, gazing out at the limitless beyond.   
  
"Hey, kid, go get me a beer outa the fridge." He gestured to the kitchen corner. Stanley was slumped on the couch, avariciously counting the day's heist from "the nice people at the bank." She picked herself up and walked over to the whitish contraption, (the refrigerator door was somewhat disgusting and brownish as well), pulled out a lukewarm bottle, (the fridge didn't work very well because Stanley didn't regularly pay the electric bill), and handed it to the man. "Thanks," he grunted as he slipped out a pack of Marlboro cigarettes and struggled to create a flame in his tiny rusted silver lighter. "Hey, come gimme a hand here."  
  
She solemnly walked over to him, obediently created a small, flickering, orb of flame in her palm, and he touched his cigarette end to it, igniting the crushed leaves inside. The end of the cylinder turned a bright orange color, and a transparent smoky trail spurted out of it. He leaned back on the couch again, contentedly, and commenced his counting of the greasy green bills. She shambled back over to the windowsill again and plopped down on the floor.   
  
"All, right...hey, these are all unmarked bills...there's gotta be at least ten grand in here..." he looked up. "Hey, you, what the hell is your problem? Ya look like someone just like killed your family o' somethin'..."  
  
"..."  
  
"What's ya damn problem, kid?"  
  
"..."  
  
"Goddamn it, do I gotta sock you?! Why won't ya say anything?!" he demanded.  
  
"My parents already are dead, Stanley, an' my brothers are gone..." she mumbled gravely.  
  
"Yeah, well they always been dead!! Never bothered ya before!!!"  
  
She rose from the floor, backing closer to the wall away from him.   
  
"Fine...the real problem is...I'm sick of this!!!" she yelled in definite question of his authority. "You've been tellin' me for two years now that we'll have nice home an' I won't have to kill anyone!! Didn't you see the people at the bank?!?! You made me blow the whole place up afterwards so they wouldn't find our fingerprints and nobody could say anything!! You lied to me, Stanley!! You're always lying to me!! You didn't even care about all the people who died!! An' you won't get caught now 'cause nobody lived to see us in the smoke an' even if they did it was too thick an' smoky!!! And it was the same when-when we were selling drugs and you had me kill a bunch of people and I don't even know why...an' with-with the person that you owed money and the-the-all the places we had to rob, and-"  
  
"Calm down. I already tol' you, it'll all be better soon. Just think, Jasmyne, with all this money-"  
  
"I don't want any more money!" she shrieked, and threw the bills all around the room, kicking at them with her feet. "I don't want to hurt anybody else or steal anymore or ANYTHING!! You used me for all your stupid cons and cheating people!! You USED me so you can get more money and smoke all you want and drink all your beer an' beat me up an' scream at me when I don't wanna!!! An' then you say everything'll be fine!! When, Stanley? When will everything be fine? All your sick little games and plots to steal people's money...'member the old sick guy at the hospital?! You made me pretend to be his long-lost retarded daughter so I'd get his will!! And when the people found out we hadda run really far away so we wouldn't have to end up in jail!! An' 'member when you made up the really big scam to rob the school? Well, that one failed too, an' you tried to blame me for it!! An' when I went ta juvenile jail ya hadda make up a bunch of lies ta get me out!!! I hate you Stanley!!"  
  
"No you don't!! If it weren't for me, you'd still be livin' in that dumpster on Main Street I found ya in!"  
  
"Then maybe I coulda died an' wouldn't have to have ever met you!! The only reason I stayed with you all these years is 'cause you promised that if I helped you we could eventually become a happy family and live together in a nice pretty house!! I had nowhere else to go, so I went with you! You promised!!! An' you know what? You lied to me...you were lying the whole time!! I bet you were never gonna buy us a house...you were just gonna spend it all on your stupid scams 'til you had so much money you didn't need me anymore, and then you were gonna kill me or leave me on the streets!! That was your plan all along, wasn't it Stanley? Wasn't it?!?" she gasped for breath after ranting out her speech.  
  
"No...look, I don't know why you're sayin' all this crap..." he inhaled deeply on his cigarette and took another swig of his beer; this was his 6th bottle that night.  
  
" 'Cause its true! Admit it! Fine, I don't care! I should just call the cops on you right now-"  
  
He quickly got up off the couch. "You little bitch, don't you even think about it!"  
  
She grabbed the chipped plastic black phone and prepared to press the buttons. She had no idea which buttons to dial, and hastily tried to determine a number to call. (she was never taught 911) As she struggled to settle on a number, he pounced on her, pinning her to the floor, the phone flying out of her hands to the ground; her salvation lost. She smelled the strong odor of alcohol on his breath; he was heavily drunk.   
  
"You damn bitch; I'll kill you!!"   
  
His fists smashed at her delicately formed face again and again, forming large violet bruises and blemishes across the soft flesh. He picked her up by her shoulders and threw her gruffly against the wall and smacked her face roughly, and she cried out. Many other children would have been instantly killed by his first assault, but she was toughly molded, a street kid. She perceived the sour flavor of a thick, pulpy liquid seeping into her mouth; a bright crimson river flowed out of the corner of her swelling lips and swept down her face. She tried to fight back, but her meager attempts at stopping him were no match for his brutal physical waves of attack. The sharp blow to her stomach sent her spinning backwards in a daze into the wall, and she felt another throbbing fist crash into her abdomen again, bumpy, thick knuckles driving into her belly. She felt the stinging, acidic, wretched presence of vomit spewing up her throat and into her mouth, and she heaved the mess onto the rug.   
  
"Damn it, look what ya did, ya little bitch!"  
  
He cuffed her narrow jaw and sent her plunging to the ground. She tried to pick herself up by propping herself on the palms of her hands, but he interrupted her and smashed her again in the face relentlessly. He then pulled a long, jagged switch blade, with a shot-black hilt out of his coat. He dove at her with a speed she could not outdo and rammed the knife into the child's thigh to the smoothed handle, and then abruptly yanked it out, reveling at the sticky film of blood that had accumulated on it.  
  
She screeched loudly in agony, and began to weep, clutching her leg in pure anguish. A low whimper gurgled from her lips, and she uttered defiantly,   
I could get you put in jail for that! Jus' you wait! I-"  
  
"You jus' can't learn, can ya?" And he dove towards her again, brandishing the weapon still, ready to strike with the deadly aim of the battle stance of a viper, ready to pierce its victims with its toxic mandibles of death.   
  
His rampant, drunken rage would have proved most definitely fatal, had Jasmyne not been driven to the window by trying to dodge his assault.   
  
He must have noticed, because he finally screamed, "Fine!! I don't give a damn!! I'll get rid o' you if you think that's the truth!! I'm sick of ya damn preachin's anyway!! Good riddance, ya fuckin' bitch!!"   
  
And he shoved her though the panel of glass to the pavement below. Tiny shards gouged her skin and she covered her aching face with her bloodied hands to shield it from the little knives. She was plummeting down...down...down...until she was halted by a hard surface and collided with the ground; smashing into stupor on impact.   
  
  
  
She later awakened, with her feeble body crumpled in a heap in an alleyway. She had landed in a dumpster, in a heap of grungy, greasy, black trash bags, so she had managed to outlast the fall. She felt her thinly formed jaw, and her fingers came across a thin trail of something brittle and crusted over that had somehow formed over her flesh. A bit of it flaked into her palm, and it was a dull, coppery red hue. She could still detect that sourly grotesque vomit enduring from the night before, when Stanley had...she stopped herself, not preferring to recall the happenings of the evening before. She groggily sat up and recoiled as she sensed a sharp twinge in her left leg, a feeling she had never experienced before. She could barely move and certainly couldn't walk anywhere with it. She slowly moved her eyes toward the source of the sensation, and noticed a deep wound there, her ragged clothes tainted with a series of deep claret blotches, heavily embedded into the fabric. She tore open the thin material, and shrunk back in horror at the ghastly mutilation of her thigh. The sore had healed itself slightly, and was now a reddish brown spot caked in a crumbly substance. Her leg stirred a bit when she attempted to right herself, and she whined pitifully.  
  
'I shouldn't have said that stuff last night...I really need Stanley...he was just a little drunk. Happens all the time. He'll take me back; he needs me; he told me so. I better go talk to him. Knowing him, he'll still be havin' a hangover from bein' drunk last night, and he prob'ly won't 'member a thing. I'll just be super sweet an' then he'll listen to me. Maybe I can even get him to stop stealin'...I just can't ever mention the cops again. I better go back to our apartment...'  
  
  
  
Jasmyne somehow managed to limp unsteadily back up to her and Stanley's apartment, stumbling up the stairs frequently. She finally made it to the heavy door and pushed it open. There was Stanley, sprawled across the floor, cigarette and empty ginger-colored bottle still in hand. He didn't stir at all as she crept silently over to him.  
  
"Stanley? Psssst, Stanley? I-I'm sorry about the stuff I said last night...'bout callin' the cops an' stuff...I didn't really mean it...an' I don't hate you either...you're right, I wouldn't be anywhere without you...an'-an' I don't really wanna be dead instead of with you..." she hesitated.   
  
Stanley hadn't responded to a single word she said. A few flies buzzed around his open mouth, sucking up the sweet sticky film of beer and blood that had collected on his lips. Blood. Her blood. Or was it? A yellowish puddle of liquid had flowed out of the bottle, and now lay, solidifying, on the rug. She tiptoed closer to him.   
  
"Stanley? St-st-stanley? How come you're not sayin' anythin'?"   
  
She nudged his shoulder with her shoeless foot. He didn't budge. His chest failed to rise and fall, which would have indicated he was breathing. But he wasn't. His once piercing black eyes now stared blankly ahead, a hollow expression in them. They were glazed over in an opaque substance. "Oh my God..." she breathed. Stanley was dead. An alcohol overdose; that was one hell of a hangover. His one weakness had destroyed him. He was gone. She had no one to protect her now. No one. She didn't even have a home now; she couldn't possibly afford to pay for the apartment all by herself. She was only a little kid. Stanley had always paid for the apartment and the food and all the other essential, messy, things; she'd earned her keep by helping him get the money.   
  
'Now what am I gonna do? And what if somebody finds me in here with this body...I hafta get outa here...' she backed away from the rotting corpse of Stanley. She was unafraid; she must have seen at least a hundred bodies, and she had been the cause of most of them. But none of them...none of them were someone she knew...or cared about...and certainly none had been Stanley.   
  
She took one last look at her one final beacon of hope in the surging storm of life lying dead on the floor, and then ran out the door as far as she could, away from those staring eyes of death, clamped forever in his decaying skull.  
  
  
  
Oh, yeah, just to tell you, I don't like hate Italian people and I don't like stereotype them as druggies and evil...actually, I really like them and I'm living in Venice if I don't get to run off to Egypt and be an archaeologist. [that's my lifelong dream]. Well, I'll definitely have a summer home in Venice...not that anyone CARES!!! Rrrrrgh! That damn Stanley guy really pisses me off...I'm mad at myself for creating him...I had to kill him off... Shutting up...   
  
  
  
'That damn bastard...he just had to beat the crap outa me that night an' then up an' die...good riddance to him is what I say...' "Damn it!! He always despised me, just like everyone else!! He played me for a sap because I was one just because I was little kid and I didn't know any better. He was partially the cause for my life being absolutely ruined. I hope he's having a wonderful time being roasted and scalded eternally in hell."   
  
At this point, her slender, sleek black cat silently padded into the room perkily with a joyful spring to her step.   
  
"Hey, Celeste."   
  
She hopped gingerly into Jasmyne's lap and a light rumble echoed from her throat. Jasmyne lightly stroked the graceful feline's silken fur, bits of light from the window reflecting off of it in glittering rainbow highlights. The cat blinked coolly at her friend with her shining emerald eyes with flecks of golden hues. Her sandpapery tongue stroked Jasmyne's hand amorously, and Jasmyne smiled down at her and lightly kissed her nose. Celeste mewed sweetly, and then slipped off of Jasmyne's lap and pranced over to her bed to take a peaceful nap.   
  
'That cat is my only friend in the world...everyone hates me but her...none of the world would ever care if I killed myself...' Jasmyne raised the blade over her chest, ready to thrust it into her neck, ending her life forever.   
  
"No, don't..." reverberated a wavering, eerie voice that seemed to originate from no place at all.  
  
She stopped instantly and spun around on her heel. The figure of a tall, slim woman stood before her, her wispy auburn hair flowing down over her shoulders. The calm, sky blue eyes gazed furtively yet fondly at her. The figure appeared unreal...supernatural. Its shape undulated in place like a ribbon in the breeze on a windy spring day, and its outline quivered. Her-Jasmyne assumed the figure was a she- wore nothing but a simple white gown that waved in the air, even though the atmosphere was perfectly still. It seemed as if a divine, heavenly, aura surrounded her; she did seem somewhat angelic. Jasmyne wasn't in fear of the spirit, which is what it obviously was; she'd seen numerous entities such as this one before. But not quite like this one...no, she was...different, somehow... Being a witch and a seer of spirits, Jasmyne was very well acquainted with experiences with wandering souls...but this one...something was...odd...about it...familiar, almost... The woman was definitely someone she'd seen before...but who could it be? Why couldn't she recognize her? Another possibility was that the spirit was trying to trick her into believing that she knew her...this didn't even have to be her true form...spirits were misleading like that many times...but what did this particular apparition want with her? They always had some sort of reason for not crossing over or appearing to the living...whether it be evil, to show or tell them something, to get revenge...but they never just showed themselves to humans with no motive.   
  
'Maybe it's about time that I ask her why the hell she's in my house...but what if she isn't the kindly type of spirit? What if she died a treacherous death...or what if she is a disturbed, angry soul and is out to kill me for some reason I'm unaware of...hmmm...I wonder if it's strong enough to pick up that knife and stab me with it...? Well, she'd be doing me a big favor if she killed me, I guess...gets rid of my dirty work...what the hell. If she wanted me dead, she definitely would have tried something by now.' She hesitantly moved closer to the wiggling shape. "Umm...you probably already know that I'm, uhhh...Jasmyne Kaiba and I can see you very well. Umm...don't take me the wrong way, but why are you here?"  
  
The woman laughed in her high voice. Shaking her head, "Darling, you're just as silly and unsure as you always were. Don't you recognize me?"  
  
Jasmyne blinked confuzzedly a few times. 'What could this spirit possibly be talking about?'   
  
She bit her lip. "Well,...no offense, but...I..." she was extremely careful not to insult the phantom; they could be easily provoked; she'd had personal experience with that. It wasn't pretty. "To tell you the truth...I have no idea who you are or why you're at my house..." realizing her mistake not ever tell a member of the dead that you'd forgotten them because they might have been insane and thought they knew you, she quickly added, "I'm sorry! I-"  
  
The woman laughed again, this time smiling broadly afterwards. "There's no need to be sorry, dear. I didn't expect you to know who I was, anyway. It's been so long, and you've been through so much..."  
  
"How do you know about everything I've been through?" she inquired suspiciously., raising an eyebrow.  
  
"You really have no idea who I am, do you?"  
  
Jasmyne rotated her head in a negative motion, never moving her gaze from the specter. She cocked an eyebrow.  
  
"Well...I'm...your...mother..."  
  
  
  
OK, so this sappy ending part was sorta weird...but it was sad writing about the whole Stanley bit. I hadn't even planned on that originally...but it was really cool anywho. auuuuugghghhhh!! Now I'm saying anywho!! First spiffy, now this! What has this world come to...die, Mystic Kiwi! Look what you've done to me!  
  



	5. Reunion

CHAPTER V: REUNION  
  
  
  
"M-m-mom?" she stuttered in disbelief. Tears sprung up in her eyes. "Is it...is it really...you?"  
  
Smiling warmly at her daughter, she nodded.   
  
Jasmyne pondered this for a moment. are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky? 'Wait...don't get your hopes up too high...she could just be posing as her for some strange, sick reason. That's probably it. Why wouldn't she have come to me earlier, like when I was with that damn asshole Stanley? She knew I was a seer of spirits...' Jasmyne was well aware of the fact that spirits were only truly honest about one half of the time...the other half, well...they were filthy liars. Their souls were corrupted and destroyed from the anguish of death.  
  
"How can I tell if it's really you? I don't have any proof."  
  
"Of course it's me, Raindrop."  
  
At the sound of her mother's childhood nickname for her, she burst into sobs and fled into her mother's open arms. This worked because she was an angel, not a ghost, so she had some substance to her. Her mother stroked her long hair lovingly. "My sweet little Raindrop, how pretty you've grown...you look more like me every day...ohhh...how I've missed you..."  
  
Jasmyne breathed deeply and smelled her mother's own rose petal perfume that was unmistakable hers. Jasmyne recalled distinctly this aspect of her mother; she had once spilled some on her bed and it had eternally smelled of rose petals, a constant reminder of her mother when she went to sleep. kinda from Anastasia, but oh well... Jasmyne was vaguely listening to her mother's voice as she drifted into thoughts of her distant past.  
  
  
  
She was a little girl again, not even yet three. Yes, the carefree blissful era. She was playing outside in the scorching summertime heat. She could smell the lilacs and roses that her mother planted every year in front of the house to keep their garden cheery; they were Jasmyne's favorite. She plucked a delicate cluster of purple blossoms and held it close to her nose. The petals tickled her skin, making her giggle with joy. She looked up into the endless, cloudless sky, the bright noontime sunshine blinding her huge grey eyes. Shading her face from the overwhelming rays, she continued gaping into the vast cerulean sky. She noticed a flock of birds soaring overhead.  
  
"Hey, birdies!" she greeted them, waving her hands excitedly and jumping up and down. She then lay down in the sweet scented grass; her father had just mowed it and the entire lawn was filled with the smell of fresh-cut grass. She rolled around and down the gently sloping hill of her yard, shrieking with glee and she sped downwards. She played this way, examining bugs, picking exquisite blossoms, tumbling in the grass, for hours on end in her idyllic childhood world. Billowing rain clouds suddenly filled the sky and blocked out the welcoming light of the sun. A few wet droplets pipped on her face, and soon the sky and the air were a cascade of falling water. She twirled around and around, her hair and clothes quickly soaking and dripping with water, drops flying everywhere as she spun around. Her mother, who had been gardening nearby, sprinted over to her.  
  
"Sweetheart, Jasmyne, maybe we should go inside...you could get a cold."  
  
"But why, Mommy?" she inquired, as if not already knowing that she could get sick. "I like the rain. It's pretty. Dance with me Mommy! Dance with me!" and she resumed prancing and leaping around the lawn, occasionally slipping on the saturated blades of grass. Her mother stood firm where she was. "C'mon Mommy! It's just a little water! It never hurt nobody!!"  
  
Grinning, her wonderfully carefree mother threw her head back and laughed her silvery laugh at her daughter's innocent antics. She took her daughter's tiny hands, and together they whirled around and around without a care in the world.  
  
Her mother had dubbed her Raindrop ever since that day, for her smoky eyes that gave one the impression of a thunderstorm afoot and her daughter's irrepressible love for the rain.   
  
  
  
"What are you thinking about, Jasmyne?"  
  
Jasmyne brushed her childhood memory away and answered, "Oh...nothing. Just memories...of when I was a kid..." 'When my life was normal and happy,' she thought with spite.  
  
The spirit shook her head again, this time in disapproval. "Memories are nothing to be taken lightly, my dear. They are very important."  
  
"Yeah...whatever. They're the only things that keep me alive now anyway..." She ranted, "But why the hell did you decide to come to me now, Mom? If you knew so much about my shitty life for those six years on the streets, why didn't you try to help me then? I was almost killed by that bastard Stanley...and it wasn't too great after him either...actually, it got worse...Oh, wait, you're so smart, you already know everything. I've been trying to contact you for years...ever since I learned that I could see spirits...I even tried a bunch of attempted sŽances...but then again, they didn't work too well because I didn't have any candles or anything that belonged to you...but I did everything else right! Why didn't you come! For Christ Sakes, I had to cut my arm up to use my own blood for the ceremony! And you didn't come! You were my last resort before becoming absolutely miserable. I-"  
  
"Calm down, dear. Let me explain-"  
  
"NO! You listen to me! I needed you! More than I need you now! If you had helped me, then maybe I wouldn't be trying to kill myself out of sheer misery! I still can't believe that you never came to help me! I don't ever want to see you or talk to you again for what you put me through...you and Dad just had to die and then I got stuck on the streets hanging around filthy assholes who sold drugs and used me! You didn't come to me then, so why come to me now?!"  
  
"Darling, listen to me. You really need me now; I knew that you were going to get through on the streets because you're my strong little girl and-"  
  
"Yeah, but I sure didn't want to have to be your 'strong little girl!' I just wanted to live a normal life like Seto and Mokuba did with that damn rich guy and Seto even got his own company and he's really famous and nobody even knows who I am! Why are you trying to stop me killing myself, anyway?! You can't stop me! I-I lived on those damn disgusting streets until I was nearly twelve! I-I-how could you-you POSSIBLY think that I didn't need your help?! Did going to Heaven like mess with your head?! Did Saint Peter say, 'I'm sorry, but when you enter the pearly gates, you have to lose all reason and go nuts.' My life was hell! And now I'm like permanently scarred for life thanks to it! I-" she blurted out. "You know what! I bet I don't even have to kill myself; Seto will probably do it for me, my loving big brother. And then he'll bury me in the backyard!"  
  
  
  
FYI- just to inform you suspicious little brats out there who think that I copied this idea of backyard burying from Englasu, I didn't. I made this up all by myself before she even told me about it. And no, she didn't copy it from me either; she didn't even know I was writing this story because I wouldn't let anyone touch my little notebook I wrote the rough draft in. I guess great minds really do think alike.  
  
  
  
Seto was smashing into the turf with a hot pink plastic beach shovel that you use to dig holes at the seaside.  
  
"Seto, can I have Jasmyne's room? I wanna put my toys in it 'cause I'm a spoiled brat who has everthing."  
  
"Nope, sorry, you can't. I need it for my metal briefcases that work as both paper carriers and damn good people smackers. Two uses in one! I also need to put in my obscenely huge collection of trench coats that I spend all our money on so you have to wear striped convict clothes that don't match. Yeah, the next charity shipment should be coming soon. Act weak and cold, remember? I also need it for my card deck, complete with display cases for my Blue Eyes...oh! I also need the room for my many implements of killing for my business murders...I mean! You didn't hear that, got it little brother?!"  
  
Looking incredibly confused and frightened, the ten year old replied, "Ummm...OK...but...how are we gonna fit her in the hole that you dug? Isn't-isn't there s'posed to be some kinda funeral box or somethin'?"  
  
Seto looked up at his little brother, wiping his sweaty brow with a soil-covered hand. "Uhhh...yeah...you're right. Here...we'll use...ummm..." he glanced around hastily. "Aaha! We'll use one of my briefcases. Help me shove her in."  
  
"But-"  
  
"Just do it. I won't miss one briefcase. It doesn't matter. Wait-this knife she used is really nice..." he quickly snatched it out of her neck, slicing the cut even deeper as he yanked it out. He then secretly pocketed it within the unknown depths of his trench coat. Then, with a heave ho!, they picked up her carcass and tossed it into the briefcase like a hunk of raw meat. Seto then hurled the metal box into the hole carelessly and slapped his hands together in the 'All done!' fashion.  
  
  
  
Her mother looked at her with pity. "You really are hopeless. Your brothers would never do that; you know that. They love you; they're your brothers. Maybe you should seek help..."  
  
"Help??!!!" she yelped. "I don't need help! I maybe needed yours a few years ago...it's not my fault the entire world detests me!! You're forgetting I can read minds, mother...I know that nobody cares about me...if they did, I would find something about me in there. But I never do. Never have; never will. Stop lying to me...maybe if you won't let me stab myself, I can find some sort of potion or spell to-"  
  
"No! That's why I came to you!! To stop you. You definitely should not be using you powers to kill yourself...besides, there's no suicide spell that I'm aware of...and I know a whole lot more than you do...not one without a lot of pain, anyway...but what I need to say before I have to leave you is that-"  
  
She choked, "You have to...to leave me? But-but why?"  
  
She smiled. "I thought you hated me and didn't want to see me ever again?"  
  
"You know I didn't mean that...you're my mother..."  
  
"I knew you'd say that. Now, I need to say this before my time runs short; I don't have much time as it is. I want to inform you that your brothers do love you and no one really hates you. But the thing I really have to tell you is that...I need to warn you of something. Something terrible, unthinkable, is going to happen. Something even worse than death. It-"  
  
Curiously, "Could you tell me what it is?"  
  
She sighed. "I am still unsure, but you may get a premonition later. You must do something to stop it before-"  
  
"How the hell am I supposed to be able to stop something if I don't know what it is?!"  
  
"Just...be prepared, my little Raindrop. Now, I must leave you..."  
  
"No!! Don't leave me!! I have so many questions to ask! Please!! Don't go!! I need you!"  
  
Ignoring her pleas, the apparition slowly began to dissolve, evaporate into the air, until Jasmyne was left by herself in the room, afternoon sunshine spilling onto the floor and all over her body. She collapsed on her side, weeping uncontrollably.   
  
"Mom..."  
  
  
  
Yeah, sorta sappy...but who doesn't love a little sappiness? Besides, t'was sorta fun to write...anywho [DIE!] I'm gonna stop writing for a little bit because I'm posting like 35 pages at once and I wanna wait for reviews...review now!! I'll post more story when I get a lot of reviews...if a lot are bad, I'm just gonna go dunk my head in kerosene and light myself on fire.  
  



	6. Questions and No Answers

CHAPTER VI: QUESTIONS...AND NO ANSWERS  
  
  
  
Okey pokey, so I changed my mind about not posting anymore yet. The damn account maker wouldn't work and I got really bored trying to make it work but it finally did and I needed to do something while I waited. So, umm...yeah...  
  
  
  
Jasmyne had regained her grandeur by now and was currently pacing back and forth around her room.   
  
"What the hell did she mean by, 'something really bad is going to happen?' I HATE it when spirits act like that, 'oh, I'm dead, so I can be all mysterious and not tell you anything straight forward.' Damn it!! Why couldn't she stay longer, anyway? Did she have like a twenty-minute pass from Heaven? Is it like some sort of prison or worse...a school?? It had better not be...not that I'm ever going to end up there anyway...and why did she think I didn't need her? Besides the whole Stanley bit, I also had to contend with having no food or clothes or money...and I also had to figure out all of my powers all by myself! I must have blown up a billion things just trying to aim correctly...and perverted child-molesting druggies and drug dealers...well, it's a sucky life. I hate that movie, It's a Wonderful Life. So that guy had a chippy nice life where everyone needed him. And everybody gave him a bunch of money just cause he was stupid and lost 8000 dollars. How the hell do you lose 8000 dollars?! And then that fag angel Clarence...Look. I'm dishin' out wings! So everyone needed him and loved him and the whole town would suck without him. Big fucking deal. Nobody needs me. That movie has got to be the gayest, most inaccurate movie ever made. Life sucks. Period. And mine is even worse than the average life. I would just kill myself if it weren't for-"   
  
Celeste's fuzzy head suddenly popped up from her curled black body in alarm, previously undistinguishable from the rest of her. Jasmyne smiled and walked over to her only friend in the world, and sweetly scratched her chin. Celeste purred loudly in satisfaction, and rubbed her cheek against Jasmyne's hand, long whiskers tickling the skin.   
  
Jasmyne went on with her depressing speech to herself, still pacing unsurely around her room, "It's not like everything got happy in the end, like my mother probably thinks. I still don't understand everything, my brothers hate me...well, at least Seto does, anyway...Mokuba's too innocent to think evil thoughts...oh, yeah, and I've also got some perverted blonde kid who like wants to stalk me or rape me or both or something. Peachy. You know what?! I've had it with this whole 'unsure vision of doom' business. I've gotta find out SOMETHING. If I haven't had a premonition about it yet, that either means it's not happening for a while...but Mom said it was soon...or the spiffy people whoever they are that send me visions are being lazy bastards. Probably the latter of the two. Sadly, that usually ends up with someone dying. The victim here is probably me, otherwise the happy little people who run Heaven wouldn't have let my mom just come down and see me and warn me of this horrible thing that she can't even tell me what it is. Peachy. Damn it...I have to see if I can find out anything...maybe there's something in my little collection of magic books."  
  
  
  
She decided to ignore her homework for the moment and ventured into her brother's vast sea of books the library in case you're too dense to figure out the metaphor! and pulled over a heavy burgundy leather chair, the overstuffed kind. "Seto never comes in here any more anyway; he's too wrapped up in his own conceited ways and his f'ing company to care nowadays. I won't be bothered in my search."  
  
She wandered over to a dusty, forsaken shelf in the far reaches of the room and blew off the earthen powder, spiders scattering and webs tattering. poetic! It rhymes! She scoured through her numerous magic volumes that her brother had never noticed were there, as she had deliberately put them in a far off corner. 'Hmmm...Spells, Herbal Potions, Charms, An Index of Demons and Wraiths, Magical Folks and other Magical Creatures, Hexes, Aaa-ha!! A History of the Kaiba Witches. Perfecto. Hopefully this might say something...if that doesn't work, I'll try to find a vision book for 2002...I doubt there is one, but if this is supposedly really bad and important, then it SHOULD be in our family book.'  
  
Before sitting down, she noticed another book. "Spiritual Possessions of Dragonflies?! What the hell is that? Our family has an odd taste in books...I probably don't want to know..." and she curled up in the comfortably puffy chair, tucking her legs inward. Starting on page one, she began to peruse through the two thousand page work, yellow crinkled pages crackling in her hands as she turned the pages.  
  
  
  
"Yaaawwwwwn!"   
  
She looked up from the primeval leaves, wincing as her neck that had been craned down returned to its normal position.   
  
"Well, it's dark out, I know that," she so keenly observed. She raved, "How long have I been sitting here?! All I found was a huge history of my family and the only thing that actually helped me was that the witch gene tends to run in the girls, so that's why Mokuba and Seto aren't special and Seto has always thought that I was absolutely insane! What am I DOING here?! This isn't helping me at all!! I also know now that our family ran away to Transylvania in the medieval times when witches were being persecuted and we lived with gay male vampires! Like I really needed to find that out! Like that actually helps my case...and why hasn't Seto come to tell me to go to bed?! I'm his damn little sister and it's like two o'clock in the morning and I need my sleep if I'm to be sane enough not to be going to go and shoot myself throught the skull and kill myself to death! Does that sentence even work...? Oh, I don't know! He's probably too high on caffeine and hacking programs to even think straight enough to care!! Well, fuck him!!" Still scowling and mumbling angrily to herself about things Seto would not be too pleased to hear out of anyone's mouth, especially his sister, Jasmyne selected another book off of the shelf, something about penguin mystics. She thought better of it and grabbed a book about the millennium items she must have read twenty times at least. She lay down in the armchair again and fell softly to sleep within an hour.  
  
  
  
OK, yeah, short chapter. This chappy's just sorta there...It pisses me off, but the penguin mystics are cool. I want one. Even though I lied, please review anywho. [die, Mystic Kiwi!!!!] Don't worry, the next chapter is obscenely long.  
  



	7. Crash and Burn

CHAPTER VII: CRASH AND BURN  
  
  
  
this is like one of my favorite chapters; but it's REALLY long. I think the next chapter's longer, though...[checks spiffy little notebook] yup, definitely is. It's better, too. Oh, yeah, and in case you think I'm some kind of person who's like out to kill Mystic Kiwi, [cue evil laughter] I'm not; we're actually really good friends. [neither of us can figure out how we've stayed friends so long...] It's just that I hate the phrase "anywho" and now she's got me saying it. I just remembered how she told me Claudia dies in Interview with the Vampire and I cry when she does whenever I reread it and Mystic Kiwi should die!!!! WAAAAHHHHHHH!!!! [sobs uncontrollably for a few moments]. Oh, yeah, and to redeem myself for all the times I've condemned her to die, read her stories. [she's hopeless and needs the publicity]. They're really cool, especially the mole poem and the tiger "Huntress" poem. The protagonist in "Timeless" really pisses me off, though. VALERIE HERALD SHOULD DIE!!!! But, Chad lee dah. Oh, yeah, and the "Across Time" story was brought to you in part by the following sponsors: MWA!!! (is that how you spell it in French?) I made up the super spiffy name Selene for the girl, and I convinced her to write it, so I'm not as satanic as you might be led to believe. While I'm at it, read my other friend's stories too, even though they'll all probably forsake me and say, "I don't know her! She's just...ummm...some random nutcase who THINKS she knows us!"Hee..hee...Well, anywho [aauuuggggh!!! The pestilence is spreading!!!] read ShadowSpirit, Englasu [like she needs the advertising! 200 something fucking reviews for like her first story! Yeah, right...at least I have better sayings like chad lee da and okey pokey.] Randomitsanity, Heavenstone, and, uh...I think that's it...yeah, bye...  
  
  
  
The gang was driving in Joey's dad's car home from school and they were just sorta cruising around afterwards because they didn't have to go home and they didn't want to either. wouldn't you rather drive around with your friends instead? Joey was driving because it was sort of his car, Tristan is just too, well, Tristany, (and he couldn't press the pedals without some help), Tea didn't feel like it and she doesn't scream at other drivers enough, and nobody at the driving agencies and the signing up places for drivers ed would believe Yugi that he was old enough to drive. He'd already attempted to sway them from their decision not to allow him to drive and then they told him at the counter that he should come back when he grew up in seven years. The fact that his head didn't even reach over the counter and he had to stand on his tiptoes to talk to them sort of told them that he couldn't reach the pedals. Then when he threw a temper tantrum because they wouldn't let him even try to get a license and his friends had to drag a kicking and screaming Yugi out of the office, the people were convinced that not only was he too young and immature, he also needed some serious anger management counseling, which Grandpa had been trying to get Yugi into, but he kept unintentionally soul-shattering them with Yami, and that didn't go over well. Then he tried to explain something that he didn't really understand well himself, and that didn't bode well with the people either.  
  
Joey was still pretty ticked off at Tristan about the previous day and Tristan was not too pleased with the fact that he now had a fractured leg bone thanks to his former friend's steel tipped boot that he was ready to smash Joey over the head with. Tristan had to take a happy little visit to our good friend the hospital after class ended when he discovered that he couldn't walk very well without a searing pain arising from his leg. Now he was stuck with a crutch for six weeks and he was secretly plotting to murder Joey with a hacksaw. They'd been coasting along for about 1/2 hour now with no determined purpose, and were a considerable distance from any of their homes, when Yugi, the self-proclaimed peace maker, filled the sound vacancy,   
  
"Ummm...how's your leg feeling, Tristan? Any better...?"  
  
Tea smacked her forehead in a Yugi-that-was-so-not-the-right-thing-to-say way, and mumbled, "I think you're losing your touch, Yugi..." and Yugi detained that it was a mistake when Joey sneered with wickedness,  
  
"Well, I sure hope it still feels like crap. I hope they gotta cut it off with a ax. With no pain-killa. I'd kick 'im again anyday. Guess Tristan's even whimpier 'n me...and he makes fun o' me..."  
  
"Oh, yeah?! Well, at least I don't suck at duel monsters!" random, but true...this was before the whole Duelist Kingdom bit... "You don't even know what a trap card is, so there!"  
  
Insulted, Joey yelled in his face, "Well, at least I can't pierce a damn shish-ke-bob on my hair, unicorn face!"  
  
"Neither can I..." he reached up and felt his hair, realizing with dismay that this was true. "Ummm....well...I've heard that spiked hair is all the rage now!! Or it will be, fashion challenged!! Look at Yugi!" he indicated to the tri-color haired kid riding in the backseat. thanx for the Yugi description, Mystic Kiwi, maybe I'll spare you...for now...MWAH HA HA HA!!  
  
"Since when does Yug got any fashion sense?! He wears a freakin' dog collar around his neck an' all that jewelry-an' look at his clothes with like a damn flair out cape in da back-"  
  
The missing member of the seven dwarves cried, "Hey! Don't bring me into this!! And don't make fun of my wardrobe!! I live with my sixty year old grandpa in a freakin' game shop!! How normal can I possibly be?! And I LIKE my clothes, for your information. I like my clothes very much, thank you very much. And at least...at least...at least I- and my necklace is really cool!! Don't make fun of my puzzle. Just 'cause you don't appreciate it and threw part of it...Grandpa says it makes me special and he gave it to me...and...and...you're making fun of me!! You're so mean!"   
  
And he turned his head away from his friends in the front, squashed himself against the window in a mopey manner, and stared out it at the passing cars, all the while mumbling nasty things to himself.  
  
"Yeah!! YOU'RE the one who should be wearin' the dog collar, Joey!!"  
  
"Hey!!"  
  
"Look what you two did! Now Yugi's crying!!" She patted her little friend's shoulder reassuringly. "Don't worry...it's okay...they weren't trying to be mean..." she smoothed his spiked hair out his reddened, squiched, face.  
  
He pushed her away and grumbled, "I'm not CRYING, Tea. I just hope that those two go die somewhere in a remote area of South Africa by getting strangled by rabid snakes."  
  
Skeptically, "Can snakes even be rabid?"  
  
"Hmmm...good question, Joey."  
  
She rolled her eyes as the pair muddled over that, and said cautiously, "Are you feeling okay, Yugi?"  
  
"Yeah, just fine. My friends think I'm some kind of little shrimp who can't do anything and should just go be friends with some ten year olds. Well, I'm sure they're a whole lot nicer than you are! You guys never respected me, never! Just 'cause I'm short, and-and-for Christ Sakes, I have feelings too! Just 'cause I'm short doesn't mean I don't! I'm a human bean and-"  
  
"That's human beings, Yug," he corrected him.  
  
His tiny chin quivered and he began again, "See what I mean? No respect..." and he slouched away again grouchily and began kicking his little sneakers against the side of the car in an attempt to push the door open and throw himself out. There was a child safety lock on the door that he couldn't figure out, so he couldn't open the door without his friends' help...not that Joey knew how to work either....  
  
"Yug, maybe you shouldn't be doin' that..."  
  
"Don't go tellin' Yugi what to do! Didn't you just hear what he said?!"  
  
"I'll tell 'im whatever the hell I want! EXCUSE me if I don't want my friend ta fall outa the door and get turned into a splattered multicolored pancake o' roadkill!!"  
  
"People don't splatter, you moron. Kaiba's right...you really are stupid..."  
  
"If the car's goin' fast enough, someone could!!"  
  
"You're so thick you'd barely be phased if I shoved you out the window!"  
  
"Well, at least I'd still be alive!!"  
  
Yugi and Tea looked back and forth helplessly as their two friends pitted themselves against each other with their fiery tempers erupting at each other in an overflowing mess of a scorching dispute.   
  
"Smooth going, Yugi..." she whispered. "They're probably going to kill each other now and then we'll have no one to drive..." And the continued listening as their horn-headed and ditsy friends prolonged their pointless quarreling.  
  
"So what if I don't know howta multiply or divide or dat thing when ya take one number away from 'nother an' ya get another number-"  
  
"You mean, 'subtraction?'" Tristan said mockingly.  
  
"Ya, that. So I'm not a mathy person. I-"  
  
"You couldn't even spell 'subtraction' if your life depended on it, 'unmathy person.'"  
  
"So I'm not a spelly person either!! Who cares!! I'm good at other stuff! I...I..."  
  
"You sure can stare at girls and make up really stupid excuses and lies about it..." he said under his breath.  
  
"Hey!! That's why I kicked your damn leg in the first place! I can smash ya again pretty good too, an' there ain't no teacher here ta yell at me, 'Mr. Taylor!'" With this last remark he swung his leg back and crashed it into Tristan's impaired leg.  
  
"OOOWWWWWWWW! What the hell was that for?!"  
  
"So what, now you're mean AND stupid? You got less memory than a goldfish!! Ain't so great an' makin' fun of Joey anymore, are we Tristan?" Joey asked with sarcasm.  
  
"Joey, watch the wheel! You're gonna get us killed!" Yugi yelped suddenly. Joey had been ignoring his driverly duties and quickly turned around and grabbed the wheel, swerving abruptly right before they smashed into a nearby karate hamster store.   
  
"Ya crazy suicidal kids, get away from here and go kill yourselves somewhere else! Society hates you and you'll be damned to hell eternally for suicide! Murder of one's self is a sin! Read the Holy Scriptures more often, ya damn sacrilegious kids! I hope you get buried at an intersection so your lost souls won't don't know where to go! Ha ha ha! Eternal damnation! To all of you! Don't say you weren't warned..."   
  
The mentally ill, old woman with thin white hair and cracking, arthritic limbs who happened to also be the owner screeched at them, pointing a bent, accusing finger at them. With her wrinkled, leathery skin, it was tough to say how she was held together. Another younger woman came out and led the ranting woman back inside through the beaded door, trails of incense wafting out the entrance, the old hag swinging her blunt wooden broom around in the air hostilely. The younger girl cast the incredibly terrified group a discomfited smile, and inched back inside.  
  
Still rubbing his leg with remorse, Tristan said, "Oh, yeah, Joey? Well here's what I think about your damn metal boots. If you're gonna keep kicking me with them, fine. I'll do something about it. I can't be controlled by an idiot like you."   
  
With this he yanked one of the boots off of Joey's socked foot and hurled it at Joey's startled face, and, with horrendous aim, he missed the blonde by a long shot and it bounced off his chair, which sent the violent piece of foot apparel soaring into the back seat with great momentum. Tea screamed and shielded her face, and it hit Yugi right in the head.  
  
"You morons! Are you TRYING to kill Yugi?! We should bury YOU two at intersections! Then we wouldn't have to see you again! He's just a little kid! You can go right ahead and kill each other, but leave us out of it. We don't want to be casualties in your stupid war over nothing!"  
  
With a sickening feeling that they'd given their little hobbit-poser friend a concussion or something, Joey murmured, "Hey...uhh...you 'kay, Yug...?"  
  
Looking up perkily, he answered, "Yeah, I'm fine. Your boot just kinda bounced off my hair. I tried looking for it, but it wasn't on the floor..." his eyes searched around on the soft ground of the car again, and then he looked behind him. "Oh...I guess it broke your window in the back. Sorry about that..."  
A bit freaked out, Joey replied slowly, "No...it's 'kay Yug...I'm jus' glad you're fine...maybe you should kinda lay back on the hair gel..."  
  
"And I am NOT a little kid!" he unexpectedly spat in Tea's face, remembering the fact that she had said he was "a little kid." "Just 'cause I'm as tall as Kaiba's little brother and they wouldn't let me learn to drive doesn't mean-"  
  
"Actually, Yugi, you're sort of shorter than him without your hair..." Tristan snickered.  
  
"I'll just pretend I didn't hear that," the undersized fifteen year old griped sulkily.  
  
"Joey, damn it, you're ignoring the wheel again!" Tea shrieked, disregarding the fact that her growth stunted friend was still upset.   
  
Joey jerked his head forward just in time to see that the car was speeding head long at a phone pole, and he squealed the vehicle to a halt, black rubber of the tires melting instantly with the blistering, heated friction of the wheels against the pavement. Joey and Tristan hugged each other in frozen fear and yelled in unison, "Oh my God, we're gonna die! I'm so sorry I was mad at you!!" And they exploded into a torrent of sobs. Thinking strategically, Yugi leapt forward and slammed his size eleven children's foot onto the brakes, but the car smashed into the metal post anyway with a shattering CRASH!, but the initial blow was lessened substantially by Yugi's valiant effort.  
  
  
  
They were petrified in absolute silence for about ten seconds until Joey and Tristan realized they hadn't been annihilated and they were hugging each other. They uncomfortably shoved each other away with disgust and moved over to the edges of their seats.   
  
Tea finally asked, "Is everybody fine...?"   
  
They all nodded, still recovering from the enduring atmosphere of fright, and then she yelled, "You could've KILLED us, you idiots! Do you know how stupid and dangerous your fight was?! Not only were you losing your friendship over some dumb girl, you almost made not only Yugi become road kill, we were almost all killed! If it wasn't for Yugi, we'd all be in morgues right now with spooky guys with gloves inspecting our dead bodies! Your friendship is more important than a dumb argument. And FURTHERMORE, you don't throw metal objects around in a moving car and you have to look at the damn road. Ever wonder what the thin, clear, panel of glass in the front of the car is for?"  
  
Doubtfully, "No...everyone knows it's for lookin' through, Tea...is there some other use for it that I wasn't tol' 'bout?"  
  
She inhaled heavily, and, clenching her teeth, "Exactly. You're supposed to be looking AHEAD when you drive, not behind you while you yell at us and get me and Yugi involved with your stupid fight...then you can't see the road, and that's when accidents like crashes with phone poles happen."  
  
He sucked in his cheeks. "Oh."  
  
"And they said I couldn't drive..." Yugi mumbled dejectedly, being negative for like the first time in his entire life.  
  
"If ANYONE shouldn't be allowed to drive, it's Joey!"  
  
"You've got that right," Tristan chuckled.  
  
"Hey..."  
  
"You're no better, Tristan. You nearly cracked poor Yugi's skull open with that damn steel tipped boot!! If he wasn't so obsessive compulsive about dousing his hair with stiff hair gel, then he'd be being rushed to the hospital right now!"  
  
"Sorry, Yugi..."  
  
Joey just scowled and crossed his arms, still fuming at Tristan.   
  
"Joey..." she warned him.  
  
"Yeah, whateva. Sorry Yug. But I ain't sorry for breakin' Tristan's leg..."  
  
"Stop fighting, you two! Is Joey's crush on some girl really more important than your bond of friendship? Friends are supposed to support each other through everything, and not give up on that when they begin to fight."  
  
"Your little 'friendship' speeches really get annoyin' sometimes..." Joey muttered.  
  
"What was that?"  
  
"Nuttin'."  
  
"Fine. Anyway, so Joey has a thing for some girl. It's not like you haven't ever liked anyone, Tristan. And so he's a spazz in school. Big deal. It's not like everyone's a genius; not even you. You got a D on the last lab report, which Joey miraculously managed to pull off a B on."  
  
"Prob'ly copied Yugi's paper..."  
  
"Only accidentally!"  
  
"You copied my paper...? I'm hurt, Joey..." Yugi lied, doing a terrible performance.   
  
"Yeah, you'd never pull off a job as an actor unless the part was a mute dwarf, Yugi. You never let me copy off your paper. But Joey..."  
  
Yugi looked at the ground in shame and was quiet.  
  
"Yeah, nobody's perfect. Quit picking on Yugi. And, although I will admit that Joey was totally immature with the whole kicking bit..."  
  
"She is so taking my side."  
  
"I'm not siding with ANYONE, Tristan! You sound like a five year old! 'Mommy's siding with me! You're siding with him! No fair! Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah...'" she derided a child's whining voice. "Stop acting so babyish! God! Sometimes I just can't stand you two! Now quit it before I lose my mind. Stop killing each other and me and Yugi over your pathetic fight. Joey's sorry for kicking you, even if he won't admit it."  
  
"Yeah, sure I am..."  
  
"Hush up! And Tristan, just be glad he doesn't like some guy-"  
  
"Rrrrrrggghhh!! I tol' ya! I don't like 'er!"  
  
Tristan rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right. Like anyone would believe that. If you don't like her so much, maybe you should quit staring at her so much. If anybody-"  
  
Changing the subject with an unwanted remark again, Yugi chimed in, "Maybe we should go check out the damage to your car, Joey?"  
  
"Huh? Whaddaya mean, 'damage,' Yug?"  
  
"Well, we DID only crash into a hard, metal pole, blondie," Tristan commented contemptuously. "Or did you forget that already?"  
  
"No, I-" He looked though the "thin panel of glass in the front of the car," commonly known as the windshield. His features froze in terror. "Oh...my...GOD!! My dad is SO gonna KILL me!! Damn it...this is like his brand new used car! What was he THINKIN' lettin' me drive it?! Did he like lose his mind?!"  
  
"He probably lost it years and years ago if he had to unfortunate task of raising you..."  
  
Snubbing Tristan's remark, he continued his frantic rant, "He paid like twenty five bucks for it! What am I-"  
  
"Don't you mean like maybe $25,000, Joey? Nobody pays $25 for a car unless you're in a time warp and it's one hundred years ago...and that's still sort of cheap..." Yugi informed him slowly.  
  
"Twenty five grand?! There's no WAY I got that kinda money! My dad-he-he-he's gonna hack me ta pieces...little bitty pieces...with a hammer. A-an' then h-h-he's gonna...gonna shove me into the w-wall's an' th-then he..."  
  
Reassuring his hyperventilating friend, Yugi said comfortingly, "It's okay, Joey. We'll-"   
  
"Just out of curiosity, how could your dad hack you to pieces with a hammer? I mean, I could understand beating you to death with it...but it doesn't really have any sharp edges..." Tristan inquired.  
  
"With da back sharp part dat ya use ta pull out nails, toothpick head. Ya don't obviously know ya implements o' murder an' destruction."  
  
Exchanging concerned glances about the blonde's psychological health, the gang resumed calming him down to the point where he was now just listing ways that his father would put an end to his pitiful existence. They were currently all standing around the smoking wreck, previously known as Joey's car, and Joey was pacing around in little circles nervously.  
  
"D'ya think that my dad'll shoot me on da spot, o' d'ya think that he'll poison me in my food later when I don't 'cpect it? Ac'tlly, it's more like Dad to burn me ta death with matches in the fireplace and then jus' pretend that I'm ashes...or maybe the axe in the garage..."  
  
"For the last time, Joey, you dad isn't going to kill you. If he was, he would've almost definitely done it by now after having to deal with you all by himself for like eight entire years. I would've anyway...I'm surprised he hasn't abandoned you on the streets by now...I would've...besides, knowing your dad the way I do, he'd most likely make you slave drudgingly away earning the money to pay for the car and THEN kill you in a really bizarre, cruel way...like...feeding you to meat eating deer with fangs...or a fire breathing chicken with claws and wings...or maybe blood sucking beavers..."  
  
"Tristan...don't say that. You'll just make him worse..."  
  
Joey moaned, "You're right! That's exactly the kind o' thing Dad'll do!! Auuugggghh...I always knew those damn deers was evil...and those chickens...no wonder we eat 'em...keep the population down so they won't rebel...but vampire beavers? Hmmm...I kinda wondered how they chewed through all those thick trees...I KNEW those wildlife nutcases and all those laws was crazy...those damn animals are out ta get us...an' the damn hippies are in on it ta take over the world! An' then-" he digressed senselessly.  
  
Yugi and Tea rolled their eyes in annoyance.  
  
Tristan, completely serious and humorless, "I know...I never thought of that before, Joey...maybe you've really hit on something...we should go protest on those laws an' tell 'em what's really going on without us humans knowin' it...but we know the truth...we'll be famous!"  
  
"Here, maybe we should fix the car first and THEN worry about Satan worshipping animals-"  
  
"When did we ever say they worshipped Satan, Tea? I bet they really control Satan so they can torture humans for eternity...you know, they like to torture us, so they created hell and animals really rule the universe and-"  
  
Agitated, "That's enough, Tristan. We'll get you to some nice friends in clean white coats later, and you can tell them all about the scheming animals."  
  
"Joey has to come, too."  
  
She sighed, "Oh, don't worry, he'll be right behind you. I can assure you of that. But first we're going to get the car fixed...the car (hopefully) won't cost more than 1000 bucks, and we'll help you pay, Joey...here, I've got...twenty-no-twenty two dollars," Tea suggested.  
  
Joey lowered his eyes. "Yeah, that'll really help," he said with a recognizable hint of sarcasm.  
  
Yugi and Tristan inspected the front of the car, with Yugi holding up the hood for Tristan to peek inside at the machinery, Tea standing nearby, and Joey was still being hysterical, gnawing his fingernails down to the cuticles painfully.  
  
"Hmmmm...well, Joey...this doesn't look too bad...it shouldn't cost that much. Maybe-"  
  
"You must be blind AND short, Yugi! Does all that hair get in your eyes?! Or did you get some gel in your eye? Did you fall down the stairs as a kid or something?! It doesn't even look like a CAR anymore!! It looks like some kind of disfigured, mangled, piece of-"  
  
"I think Yugi was trying to make Joey feel a little better, Tristan, not worse..."   
  
Joey sighed, "No, it's 'kay, guys. I'll just get killed by my dad, happens all the time anyway...C'mon, we better get it ta some car place if we ever wanna get home this year...besides, I can stall for time an' think up a story ta tell my dad."  
  
Conveniently, an auto body was only a few yards away, so they didn't even need to push the car, which was an extremely lucky thing, bringing into account the fact that Tristan and Joey were the only ones strong enough to move it, but Tristan was handicapped, leaving only Joey, who certainly couldn't move a car all by himself.  
  
  
  
They marched over to the portion of the place with the reception desk, and they entered to talk with the car dude who they were going to have repair the damage.  
  
"Hey, guys, I gotta go call Grandpa 'cause I'm supposed to be home by 10:30, and by the looks of it, I don't think that's gonna happen."  
  
"Hey, there's an idea! Why don't we just ask your Grandfather to drive us home, Yugi?"  
  
"Sorry, Tea, but my Grandpa hasn't been feeling too well lately...the doctor says he shouldn't be driving for a while..."  
  
"Oh...we're sorry, Yug. He gonna be OK?"  
  
He nodded rapidly. "Oh, yeah. He just isn't supposed to drive." And the midget walked out and began to utilize the payphone outside.   
  
While he was dialing, the tall, middle aged car man at the counter with short brown hair, deep mahogany eyes, and a almost indiscernible southern accent, came over to them and said, "Hey, can I help you kids?"  
  
After they described their predicament, he remarked with amusement, "Why do you kids have such a little kid like that out so late? It's nearly 9:45 at night." He gestured to Yugi, who by now was having a lively conversation with his Grandpa about the new stock of rare cards coming into the shop the next day. "Shouldn't he be in bed? Wow, people sure are irresponsible these days..." he shook his head in disapproval.  
  
"Ummm..." they held back a fit of giggles, deciding that Yugi had been humiliated enough for one day. "No...he's uuhhhh...he's our...our age, believe it or not...he's our friend...he's a little short, though..."  
  
The man chuckled slightly. "A little...yeah, right...bet he could get into the book of world records for weirdest lookin' person under three feet tall. How much crap did ya say he puts on his hair every mornin'? Here, let's take a look see at your car now...you say you hit the phone pole? How the hell could that happen...? ...Are you all sober!?"  
  
They put their hands up in defense of themselves and the trio all repeated 'yes, definitely,' a suspicious amount of times.  
  
"Yeah, well I know one thing Joey's drunk on..." Tristan snickered.  
  
His blonde friend whacked him again with the remaining boot, sending Tristan hopping around grasping his leg in pain.  
  
The sarcastic man gave a Tea a why-the-hell-would-you-hang-out-with-them-in-your-right-mind-look, and then, out loud, "OK, let's get you little junior NBA star and go look at the car."  
  
Tristan still clutching his shin, they led the horribly cynical individual over to the site of the brutal assassination of Joey's car, with Yugi trailing behind, running to keep up.  
  
  
  
poor Yugi! Everybody makes fun of him!!! Tee-hee...but we love him anyway with his spiffy little puzzle and cute eyes and multi-colored hair. In case you're wondering what the hell this has to do with Jazzy, chad lee dah I t'will get to that.  
  
  
  
Upon setting eyes on the automobile carcass and lifting up the nearly unrecognizable hood of the car (British chippies call them bonnets!) and scrutinizing the machine's corpse, the man finally notified them, "Well...this shouldn't cost more than $700 to repair..." deciding to go easy on the na•ve teenagers. When he saw that the dense blonde one was about ready to hang himself, he quickly added, "Don't worry, you don't have to pay it all at once...oh...and...there was a huge hole in the rear window...any idea how that happened? Did you throw the shorty one out, or what?"  
  
"No...but we kinda do know how it happened...Tristan threw my boot outa the window 'n almost killed Yug-"  
  
"You weren't even watching the wheel, genius!! You could've killed all of us, ya dumb blonde! People say that blondes can't chew gum an' walk, but they let 'em drive?! What the hell is THAT?!?"  
  
"Somebody who knows that all blondes ain't all dumb! Some of 'em can be real smart! Bet your racist brain couldn't even comprehend that!"  
  
"Wow, Joey knows a big word. You sure aren't one of the smart ones! I bet you couldn't even spell 'comprehend'!"  
  
"Oh yeah, well...sure I could...umm...K-no-C, R...I...P..."  
  
The critical car repair man laughed.  
  
"I told you you couldn't! HA! Do you need to review your alphabet, wittle Joey?" he said babyishly. He pointed a finger at the man. "And you stay outa this!"  
  
"Rrrrrrr...I'll show you 'wittle,' Narwhal Face. You're gonna wish ya never crossed Joey Wheeler today!"  
  
"Oh yeah?! You couldn' t even punch me if you tried."  
  
With this threat, the two psychopaths began to massacre each other in the middle of the sidewalk.  
  
There was nothing their friends could do to stop them without getting slaughtered themselves, so they stood by with the car man in stupefied shock.  
  
"Man, Yugi, I've never seen them like this before...they're really easy to tick off lately...I wonder what their problem is...is there some kind of PMS for guys or something...?"  
  
Slightly embarrassed at the question, Yugi sheepishly answered, "Well...not that I...know of..." An awkward silence resulted for the next few moments.  
  
"Are those two escaped mental ward patients friends? Strange, I always thought that friends generally didn't murder each other in the middle of the road...maybe there's a new definition of 'friend' going around...did the words 'enemy' and 'friend' switch meanings or somethin'?"  
  
"No...but, yeah, they're friends...this is just kinda their weird way of showing they care, I guess..." Tea shrugged.  
  
"Okay...well, I doubt the blonde'll be too happy when he realizes that his boot belongs to some hobo livin' in a shoppin' cart by now...he's purty slow, so he won't remember for a while...but when he does, he won't be happy..."  
  
"Could you stop dissing our friends?" Tea asked viciously. "They may be weird, but they're our best friends and we're closer than anyone in the world."  
  
"I doubt Blondie'll be too friendly when the other one breaks his face in."  
  
Yugi giggled. "Naaaaahhh...It's okay. They're almost always at each other's throats like this...but they make up somehow...I don't think Joey's boot'll get in the way of their friendship...like what Tea said, they're too close for that. They-"  
  
The three of them winced as they heard a vile CRUNCH as Tristan socked Joey in the face.  
  
Joey started to bawl, gripping his nose.   
  
"Aaaauuuuuggggghhhhhh! Look what you did! Are ya tryig ta kill me?! Dow by node id bleedig!!" He sniffled. A trickle of blood started to ooze down his face, forming a dark red mark on his shirt. He smeared his finger across the bottom of his nose where the liquid was steadily leaching out to temporarily rid his face of blood.   
  
"Oh...ummm...sorry, Joe. I guess we're even now..."  
  
"Ebed?! EBED?!! We ain't ebed! Firdt ya make fub ob be, and den ya punch be in da node!! Dow I'b bleedig! I'b prob'bly godda die ob lobb ob blood! Ab leabt by bad can't kill be dow!!"  
  
"Here, Joey, stop talking, that can't be good for you. We'll go inside and get you something for your nose. And YOU-" she shot a venomous glare at Tristan as she attempted to support Joey. "Yugi, talk to Tristan before he ends up talking to ME."  
  
Yugi did one of his oh-so-cute pigeon nods complete with 'hmmm' of agreement and went to have a little talk with Tristan. The unkindly pessimistic car dude, still giving them unsure are-you-positive-they-re-sane-do-you-want-me-to-call-the-funny-farm looks, left them to go work on their car, and the group went into the convenience store that was adjacent to the auto body.   
  
  
  
chippy, don't worry, t'will all make sense in good time. I know that has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot, at least for now...Yeah, and I know Tea doesn't generally act like that, but she was pissed off, and besides, t'was fun.  
  



	8. Happy Conversations

CHAPTER VIII: HAPPY CONVERSATIONS...  
  
  
  
OK, so my story is weird. It works with me. Normal people are freaks and should DIE. If you don't like it and you are bored, go smother yourself in a bathroom rug and do us all a well-deserved favor. Yeah, I was screwy when I wrote this chap...this whole chappy is nusty and odd...kinda happens when you're on a bus in the middle of October with no school work to do cause nothing is happening with the school year on the bus and you wish all the peeps on your bus could be boiled alive in a vat of jello...see, I write all my stuffies down on paper first, and then edit it and add crap on the computer as I go along, and go really slow (I have up to chap 13 written) cause I have limited electronics access, and it gets difficult you're your mom reads over your shoulder...shutting up.  
  
  
  
Jasmyne's eyes flickered open and the blurry picture of the library came into clear view after a few seconds of near unconsciousness. The clunky wooden shelves extended their reaches to the ceiling, like skyscrapers that appear to actually be grazing the heavens, hence the title dubbed upon them, the shelves nearly tilting over to the nobly carpeted floor with their overcrowded stuffing of literature and manuscripts. She rubbed her eyes wearily and blinked a few times to become used to the new, real, environment. The Millennium Item tome still sat in her lap, binding stretched out, and the sky had long ago begun to darken, and it was now an arcane cobalt shade, a few twinkling stars dotting the thick blanket covering the sky, like little holes poked inside of it, as the old tale tells of the animals, determined to have light once again, jabbed fiercely at the quilt spread across the sun to punish them. This caused tiny gaps and openings to form, and the naissance of the stars occurred. She examined the face of the old-fashioned metal clock hanging on the far wall, with its curly-cue hands lightly traveling around the fa 


End file.
